THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY 































' 






A X± 















\ ^ 



THE 



BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 



FIVE LECTURES 

BY 




>**.< 



REV. H- Cr JVIOSHER, A. JVL, 



PASTOR FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, 



Albert Lea, Minn. 



1900. 

Simonson & Whitcomb, Printers, 
Albert Lea, Minn. 



■ 



TWO COPIES MECElVE 

Library of Congr««% J 

Office of tka «£)T J\V 

APR 8 - 1900 * • 
Kegttfor of Copyrights* 



60064 

COPYRIGHT, 1900, 

BY 

R. C. MOSHER. 



SECOND COPY, 

\ °$ o v 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I.— The Distinctive Principle of page. 

Baptists, 8 

Importance of Foundation Principles, . . 9 

Necessity of Obedience, . . . . . 18 

Needless Divisions Wrong. .... 14 

How Baptists are Regarded, .... 16 

Baptist Growth and Solidity, ... IT 

The Distinctive Principle. .... 19 

The New Testament as Authority. . . 20 

Reason of Baptist Unity, ..... 21 

Proofs of Baptist Position, .... 21 

Historical Genesis of Other Churches, . . 27 

Illustrations in Germany, Africa and Cuba, . 29 

Conclusion, . ...... 31 

LECTURE II— The History of Baptists, 36 

Different from Other Church History, . . 36 

An Apostolic Succession, . . . . 37 

Misnamed Church History. .... 39 

Ancient Origin of Baptists, .... 41 

Their Aims Compared with Others, ... 42 

Misrepresentations of Baptist History. . . 44 

The Munster Kingdom, ..... 45 

The Peasants' War./ 47 

The Historical Line. — Apostolic Churches, . 49 



CONTENTS. 



Baptist ic Movements. 

St. Patrick and His Work, 

Patrick Not a Baptist, 

Welsh Claims, . 

The Petrobrusians, 

The Waldenses, 

The Anabaptists, 

Anabaptists Not Immersionists, 

Anabaptists the Real Reformers, 

English Baptists, 

American " ... 

Present Baptist Strength, 



51 

52 
55 
57 
58 
59 
61 
63 
65 
65 
67 
68 



LECTURE III.— The Sufferings of Baptists, 72 

Novatian and Donatist Sufferings, ... 73 

Persecutions Not for Immersion, . . 74 

Immersion the Universal Practice, ... 75 

Immersion in the Westminster Assembly, . 78 

John Wesley an Immersionist, .... 79 

Infant Baptism the Cause of Persecution, . 81 

Infant Baptism Itself Persecution, ... 85 

Baptists Never Persecuting, .... 86 

Number of Christians Murdered, ... 88 

Awful Sufferings of Baptists, ... 89 

Decree of the Inquisition, ... 94 

Numbers Put to Death, .... 96 

Reasons for Persecutions. .... 98 

Complicity of the Reformers, . . . 100 

Infamous Character of Procedure, . . 101 

Sufferings in England, ..... 102 

" America, 104 



CONTENTS. O 

Sufferings in Massachusetts, .... 105 

" Virginia, Etc., .... 107 

Wtiy they Endured Such Things, . 109 

LECTUEE IV.— Baptist Influence on Civil 

Government, 115 

Influence of Church on Government, . . 116 

Leadership of Baptists in Religions Liberty, . 119 

Testimonies of Writers, 120 

Baptist Confessions of Faith, .... 122 

Treatises on Religious Liberty, . . . 124 

The First Baptist Government, ... 126 

The First Baptist College, .... 127 

Liberty versus Toleration, .... 129 

Claims of Others as to Leadership, . . 130 

Influence in Holland, ..... 136 

" England, ..... 137 

of Rhode Island, .... 138 

Baptist Efforts in New England, . . . 140 

Severe New England Laws, .... 141 

Baptist Efforts in Virginia, .... 143 

Baptists in the Revolution, .... 146 

Adoption of the Constitution. — John Leland, 147 

The First Amendment, ... . . . 148 

Influence through Thomas Jefferson, . . 149 

Testimony of Mrs. Madison, .... 150 

Leadership in present Struggle, . . . 152 

LECTURE V.— Baptist Influence on The 

Spiritual Life of Other Religious Bodies, 157 

Contrast of Past and Present, .... 157 

Causes of Change, ..... 161 



4 CONTENTS. 

Anabaptists and the Reformation. . . . 16)> 

Failure of the Reformation, .... 165 

Progress Towards Spiritual Church Membership, 168 

Growing Supremacy of the Bible, . . . 171 

Peter's Primacy 172 

Defense of Infant Baptism, .... 173 

Bible Versions and Translations. . . . 171 

Increasing Number of Immersions. . . . 176 

Decline of Infant Baptism, . . . 177 

Admissions of Pedobaptists, .... 177 

Increase of Adult Baptisms, .... 181 

Decrease of Infant Baptisms, .... 183 

Presbyterian Figures. ..... 181 

Congregational " ...... 186 

Methodist ; < . . 188 

Episcopal i; 189 

Reformed Church Figures, .... 189 

Summary of Figures, . . . . . 190 

Conclusion, ....... 191 

Table of Membership and Baptisms. . Appendix. 




INTRODUCTORY, 



The origin of these lectures was as follows: It was 
years ago, while reading Baptist history, that there 
came to me, like a revelation, a vivid sense of the grand 
achievements of our spiritual ancestors and the vital 
necessity to Christendom at large of the preservation 
and enforcement of the principles which they held and 
which we hold. It seemed to me also that there ought 
to be more of a systematic teaching of these principles 
and a setting forth of our history so as to show what 
reason we have for self respect in view of the past and 
for steadfast loyalty in view of the future. Such 
study of our history as has been possible since that 
time has only confirmed my former convictions. In 
other churches there is no hesitancy in teaching de- 
nominational loyalty, but among us it is mostly left to 
the self evidence of the truths we teach, and it is no 
exaggeration to say that scarcely one in a hundred of 
our church members realizes either the importance of 
our principles, our present power, or our past attain- 
ments. I resolved at the time referred to that, if I 
should ever be pastor of another church, that church 
should have a course of addresses along these lines. 
Twice was this course of lectures attempted, but a 
period of physical prostration prevented their com- 



6 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

pletion. The third attempt was successful to the extent 
which may be shown in the following pages. My effort 
has been not to present a full view of Baptist history, 
but only to gather up and present facts in such a way 
that all Baptists "to whom these presents may come" 
may feel that they may stand a little straighter because 
of a better self respect as Baptists, and must be a little 
more loyal to those principles which thus far have been 
the preservation of Christianity from corruption and 
failure, and which shall hereafter lead to a purer 
church, a mightier spiritual force, and a speedier com- 
ing of the kingdom of our Lord Christ. 

These lectures make no large claim to originality, 
except in the plan and manner of presentation, and 
there is not much in them which could not be found, 
probably, in some other book; but inasmuch as few 
have opportunity to examine many books, this summary 
may be useful. It should be said also, that although 
much has been published of late upon Baptist princi- 
ples and history, nothing has yet appeared which pre- 
sents the subject in the same way or with the same 
purpose as these lectures. They are now published as 
they were delivered, except that in a few parts they 
have been made more full than was possible in the time 
allotted to a public address. The interest shown by 
those who have listened to them has encouraged the 
hope that they may be more widely useful by their 
publication. To our host of Baptist young people 
especially they are now presented. 

R. C. M. 



"Ye call me, Master, and, Lord: and ye say well; 
for so I am." 

"If ye know these things, Messed are ye if ye do 
them." 

"I testify unto every man that heareth the words 
of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall 
add unto them, God shall add unto him the plagues 
that are ivritten in this book; and if any man 
shall take away from the words of the book of this 
prophecy, God shall take away his part from the 
tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are 
written in this book" 



I. 



THE DISTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE OF BAPTISTS 



In these addresses we shall attempt an answer to 
the following questions: — First, What is a Baptist? 
then, Where in the records of the past do we find Bap- 
tists? next, What has it cost them to be Baptists? and 
finally, What did they do for civil liberty? and what 
have they done for the religious life of other bodies? 
The full answer to these questions would fill volumes; 
nay, the full answer can never be written, for the 
greater part of the record of their faith, their heroism, 
their endurance, their triumphs, and their weaknesses 
and failures, has perished from the earth; but we hope 
so much of an answer may be given as will inspire us 
to a loftier faith and a stronger fidelity to the truth of 
the Gospel, and to greater emulation of the heroism of 
the past. 

Let it be understood throughout the whole of this 
discussion, that while we speak only of Baptists, there 
are and have been other and smaller bodies which have 
shared in our beliefs and principles, and sometimes 
suffered for them, although we cannot stop in our dis- 



THE DISTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 9 

cussion to give proper credit to each by name. There 
are and have been many who, though not known by that 
name, should nevertheless be included under the broad 
definition of a Baptist. As far, therefore, as these other 
bodies have been in accord with us in the maintenance 
of these principles, what shall be said applies also to 
them. 

There are some questions which, apparently, do 
not seem to most people to be of much practical 
moment in christian life, and yet they are really funda- 
mental to it. They are like the substructures of a 
mighty bridge, down out of sight and not well under- 
stood, and indeed, scarcely thought of by the thousands 
who pass over it, and yet upon them the whole struc- 
ture rests, and without them it would not stand at all. 
You all know that in the erection of any great building 
the utmost pains is taken to secure a good foundation. 
A few years ago, in the capital city of this state, a great 
twelve story printing house was built. The land on 
which it stands was originally a swampy place, called 
in the West a "slew" (slough), but had been filled 
in and so changed that the city dwellers of 
my day would never have guessed what was 
the original appearance of the ground. But in 
digging out for the basement, it was found that 
the foundation must be begun in the soft clay mud of 
what had been a swamp, and to those who watched the 
progress of affairs, it seemed impossible that any con- 
siderable building could ever stand on such a basis. 
However, the contractor went on with his work. He 



10 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

dug out the mud to the depth of several feet, then he 
filled in the space with long piles driven down almost 
their whole length, putting them close together; then 
he made a mixture of concrete and filled the whole 
space with it to the top of the piles, so that when it set 
and became hard it would be almost like one great, 
solid stone. Still further, upon this concrete he placed 
great, broad stones, much broader than the thickness of 
the walls, upon these another layer of stones not quite 
so broad, and upon these still another, and then, and 
not until then, did he begin to build the walls of the 
structure. Many thousands of dollars spent before he 
began to build, but did the owners complain? Not at 
all; they knew the value of a good foundation. 

Just so in spiritual building, and in building of 
churches as well as in building of individual character. 
The foundation principles are of the utmost importance, 
and to have them right should be the very first object, 
though with most individuals it is, in point of fact, the 
last. Not one in twenty (and perhaps it would be safe 
to say not one in fifty) of the members of churches can 
tell what is the real fundamental principle on which 
their own church is built, because not one in twenty 
makes any careful study of principles or comparison of 
methods, and so decides for himself before uniting with 
a church. They come in from all sorts of reasons; 
because their parents belong to that church; because 
they were brought up in that way; because their friends 
belong to that church or intend to join it; because that 
church has the best house of worship or the most social 
advantages; or because they like the minister, or from 



THE DISTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 11 

some other such reason, but very seldom because they 
have read their bibles and examined the principles of 
church life and find that in that church the two best 
agree. 

There are certain underlying principles which give 
tone and color and distinctive character to every reli- 
gious body, and these different principles will work 
themselves out into different styles of activity and ex- 
perience with unerring certainty. Each denomination 
of christians has its characteristic type which differs 
from all the rest, and this type is what it is because the 
fundamental principles of church life and organization 
are what they are. A Baptist christian is quite differ- 
ent from a Methodist christian, and the Methodist is 
different from the Presbyterian; a Disciple christian 
differs from either of them, and again a real christian 
in the Episcopal or Lutheran church differs from them 
all. A man who has had forty years experience and 
training in the Methodist ministry is a very different 
man in his thought, his bearing and his general air, his 
style of prayer and his religious experience, from a 
man who has had a like period of training and service 
in the Baptist ministry. One who has been familiar 
with the different denominations can tell without 
inquiry and with very considerable certainty, to what 
denomination a minister belongs, upon hearing him 
preach. Each of these, of course, thinks that his own 
particular type is the highest, but that cannot possibly 
be true. Some must be better and some worse. 

But, moreover, the fundamental principles of church 
life are a matter of great importance, not only to the 



_^_^__ 



12 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

church itself, but to society at large, for society and gov- 
ernment are very profoundly influenced by the churches. 
Think, for instance, of the vast difference between 
social life in Roman Catholic and in Protestant coun- 
tries, which is familiar to us all. But think further 
about this. If it were possible to have one nation filled 
with Methodist churches and admitting no other, 
another nation likewise filled with Baptist churches, 
another with Presbyterian, and another with Episcopal 
and still another with Roman Catholic, not only would 
these different nations, in the course of a few genera- 
tions, develop different types of Christianity, but also 
of social life and of government, where would be seen all 
the gradations from the absolute freedom and equality 
of a model republic in the Baptist nation to the despot- 
ism of an irresponsible monarchy, with its caste dis- 
tinctions and divisions into privileged classes and tax 
paying classes in the Roman Catholic nation. We 
shall see by and by how profoundly the ruling idea of 
a church has influenced civil government. 

There is, therefore, a better and a worse, a right 
and a wrong starting point, and it becomes a matter of 
the utmost importance that our foundation principles 
be right. It is, moreover, my profound conviction that 
the foundation principles of our Baptist churches are the 
right ones, and the more I study them the more I think 
so; and it is still further my conviction, just as pro- 
found, that we have a sacred obligation laid upon us to 
defend them and to teach them. If we believe thai we 
hold truth which others do not, we are certainly bound to 
give it to them. Away then, with this false modesty 



THE DISTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. IB 

which lets others go on their way in error because we 
might be thought sectarian if we told them the truth. 
Why should so many of us be apparently anxious to 
persuade others of our own insignificance? And why 
should a Baptist be the only one among all the religious 
bodies 

"Who scarcely dare, with a malicious frown, 
Assert the nose upon his face his own"? 

But let us note, first, that New Testament religion 
is not a matter of feeling, but of principle; a question 
of loyal obedience to Christ. We are not to judge of 
the "amount of religion" or of the piety we may pos- 
sess by the frequency of states of blissful and ecstatic 
feeling, but by the readiness with which we obey the 
commands of Christ and the completeness of our sub- 
mission to His will. Christ never said "Ye are my 
friends if ye feel ffood," but "if ye do whatsoever I 
command you." Love and sentiment and gush are 
not piety, although there is no true piety without love. 
Obedience to Christ is piety, and an ounce of obedience 
is worth more than a ton of gush. 

Let us note again, the inconsistency of professed 
love and persistent disobedience. Jesus says, (Revised 
Version) "If ye love me ye will keep my command- 
ments." That was a hard question Jesus once asked 
of the Jews, "And why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do 
not the things that I say ?" To this question they gave 
him no answer. Indeed, how could they give an 
answer? There was nothing they could say; not a 
word. Call him master and yet refuse to obey him! 
Call him Lord and yet deny his authority ! The absurd- 



14 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

ity and the sin of it is too plain to admit of any- 
possible defence. 

And let us note again, that a needless division 
among christians is a misfortune and a sin; and let us 
join heartily with those who cry out for christian 
unity, although we may differ radically from most of 
them as to the means by which it is to be secured. 
Jesus prayed for his disciples that they all might be 
one. Four times is that thought repeated in that one 
prayer in the seventeenth chapter of John, and in spite 
of all that may be said as to its advantages, I believe 
that the present division of christians into discordant 
and antagonistic sects is something which our Lord 
never contemplated and w T ith which he is not well 
pleased. It is the product of insufficient intelligence 
and incomplete consecration. It was not so in the 
beginning and will not be so in the end, for we can not 
believe his prayer will go unanswered. There are not 
five New Jerusalems shown us in the Apocalypse nor 
forty, neither are there a dozen brides of the Lamb, and 
all at variance with each other, but only one. "That 
they all may be one, even as we are one" is the prayer 
of Jesus. That we may be one with each other, even 
as Jesus was one with the Father and as we claim to be 
one with Him; this is the ideal and this ideal is to be. 

Whose sin is it then, this discord and division, and 
whence did it come? It did not come from those who 
follow the divinely appointed way and it will only 
cease when christians everywhere return to that way. 
But if needless division is a sin, then it is evident that 
a body of christians ought not to separate itself, or 



THE DISTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 15 

remain separated, from others except for very serious 
cause. There must be some vital thing which they 
feel they must have, and yet cannot find in other bodies 
or churches, A denomination which has no distinctive 
principle— nothing which can not be found also to a 
good degree in some other denomination, has no suffi- 
cient reason for its existence. It is needlessly multi- 
plying divisions. It should disband, and so make one 
less among conflicting names, and one less occasion of 
sneers to the scoffer. But we must take our own 
medicine. Can we show such a distinctive principle? 
Would any vital thing be lost if we should cease to 
exist? If not, then let us disband. 

Now how many know whether anything w T ould be 
lost or not? Probably our people are better posted as 
to the reasons for their beliefs and practices than those 
of many other churches, because we have always met so 
much scorn and opposition as to compel examination, 
yet among Baptists there is still a lamentable ignorance 
on these matters. Every Baptist pastor is obliged to 
meet it and the questions asked by his own members 
show that many vital things are not well understood, 
and this is much more true as to our history than as to 
our beliefs. Baptists themselves do not understand as 
they should their own position, their own strength, 
their own history, or the vital importance of their prin- 
ciples to the world at large. To the great majority of 
us an examination into these things would bring a most 
surprising revelation. We have never properly appre- 
ciated ourselves, and as to the opinion held of us by 
others — w r e know very well what that is. We know 



16 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

what others think of us. There never was a people 
more misunderstood and misrepresented, and it is high 
time we ceased to be so timid about declaring our 
principles, and defending them. 

In the minds of very many (and otherwise intelli- 
gent people too) the Baptists are a stubborn, narrow- 
minded set of people, exclusive, self-righteous and 
bigoted, who are forever harping about immersion and 
making it a hobby of more importance than anything 
else; who refuse to "commune 1 ' with anybody but 
themselves because they do not recognize anybody else 
as christians, or at least, as being as good as them- 
selves, and so forth. It is all sufficiently familiar to 
us; we have heard it until we could almost say it back- 
wards. It avails nothing to say in reply that Baptist 
requirements for the "communion" are exactly the 
same as those of every other church, namely, a christian 
experience, an orderly walk, and baptism, and that 
their baptism is only that which the best scholarship 
of the world declares to be the baptism of the New 
Testament, or that no one is more ready than they to 
fellowship christians of every name and no name in 
every labor of love, in prayer, in cordial sympathy, and 
even at the table of our Lord when his own require- 
ments concerning it have been met. But it is not 
worth while to spend time in pointing out the utter 
untruthfulness of this conception. Those who believe 
these things are largely those who wish to believe 
them or those who have had no practical acquaintance 
with us. I must say, however, that many years' experi- 
ence has convinced me that there is to be found among 






THE DISTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 17 

Baptists fully as much of broad minded liberality and 
christian charity as among any christians on earth, 
and much more than among those who are foremost in 
denouncing our "bigotry" and "narrow-mindedness." 
However, there must be something to these Baptist 
people, for see how they prosper and how they are 
coming up in every way in spite of the most strenuous 
opposition. They are more rigid in their discipline 
than other churches; it is a harder matter to get into 
their churches than into almost any other, and they 
refuse many whom others accept. They are unpopular 
everywhere and always have been, yet what a sweeping 
growth they have made and what a power they have 
attained to, and their growth, moreover, has always 
been just in proportion to the strictness with which 
they have held to their peculiar principles. They have 
grown in this country, from a half dozen poor, op- 
pressed, outcast, and despised, to number more than 
four millions, and they have wealth and culture and 
learning of the highest rank. They have now (in the 
year 1899) more than forty-six million dollars invested 
in schools of learning, of which they have a hundred 
and seventy-nine, a larger amount than has any other 
denomination in America. In these schools are more 
than thirty-five thousand students. Their Foreign 
Mission Society expends more than six hundred thou- 
sand dollars annually and reports more converts from 
among the heathen than any other American missionary 
society. Taking the Baptists, Congregationalists, Meth- 
odists and Presbyterians together for eight years past, 
the Baptists have, with less than one-fifth the total 



18 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

expenditure of money, sustained nearly one-third the 
entire working force and have received more than one- 
third of all the converts. Their Home Mission Society 
expends more than half a million dollars annually. Their 
Publication Society has the finest and most complete 
printing establishment of any religious body in America, 
if not in the world, and one of the most complete of any 
kind, and also carries on extensive missionary operations 
in connection with its printing business; or rather, its 
printing business is the basis of its missionary operations, 
as its w r hole work is missionary. As to men, they can 
name a long list of those who take first place as schol- 
ars, educators, preachers, governors, statesmen, etc., 
among whom are many who are known the world over. 
There is among them no central authority as in other 
churches, whose influence might hold them together, 
but their organization is apparently a "rope of sand", 
and yet they are as harmonious a body as any. Divi- 
sions over creed questions and heresy trials that rack 
other denominations do not seem to trouble them at all. 
A "heretic", whether in high place or low, just seems to 
drop out by some natural process of elimination, and 
that is the last of him, while the church goes on just the 
same as before. Occasionally an individual does come 
to the front, with a great flourish of trumpets, declar- 
ing that the whole denomination is honey-combed by 
unbelief in the old doctrines; that the progressive spir- 
its of to-day have altogether abandoned the standing 
ground of the fathers, and that the rising generation of 
ministers is full of unrest a\id dissatisfaction, unwilling 
any longer to have their minds fettered by old creeds 



THE DISTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 19 

and longing for "a larger liberty"; that it only needs 
a leader to precipitate a universal stampede, and that 
the whole denominational edifice is about to collapse. 
And then this enterprising individual leads off, but 
there is no stampede; this uneasy brick comes out of the 
wall, but when, instead of the deafening crash of the 
whole falling denominational edifice, there is heard only 
a gentle plurik, it is discovered that only a single brick 
has fallen and as we look to see the hole it came from, 
lo, there is no hole there. Its place is already filled and 
the wall remains perfectly solid. And when the good 
brother himself thinks he heard something drop and 
looks around to see what it was, he finds "it's him." 
Now there must be some reason for all this, and if they 
have been made thus solid and vigorous because of their 
foundation principles, then let us study them. 

Well, our distinctive principle is the explanation 
of it, though the declaration of that principle will create 
surprise in the minds of very many and call forth con- 
tradiction in the minds of not a few. It is simply this: 
THE ABSOLUTE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST IN 
HIS CHURCH. 

Notice that we speak of a distinctive principle, not 
principles, for we have but one. All other things that 
may seem distinctive come directly from that. We 
insist that Jesus the Christ shall be king in his own 
kingdom, Lord in his own domain, with no rival claim- 
ant either in church authority, traditional practice, or 
individual opinion, to dispute his sway, nullify his 
commands, or change the things which He has ap- 
pointed. "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it" and 



20 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

do it without question or delay. "Ye call me Master, 
and, Lord; and ye say well; for so I am." We deny 
to the church any authority whatever to legislate in 
matters pertaining to the kingdom. Her place is to 
follow and obey. In this position we stand alone; it is, 
therefore, our distinctive principle. This may seem like 
a sweeping statement and like a condemnation of every- 
body but ourselves; but the question is not whether 
it is sweeping or whether it is condemning, but whether 
it is true. 

Furthermore, we regard the New Testament as a 
perfect and complete revelation of the will of Christ in 
all necessary things and to be, therefore, implicitly 
obeyed. If we may deviate in one point we may in 
another, and the principle of obedience to Christ is lost. 
It is the worst possible training for a convert, to teach 
him in reference to baptism or anything else, that "it 
makes no difference" whether he does what he thinks 
Jesus wants him to do or some other thing. We have seen 
njany a convert ruined in the beginning by some older 
person telling him that "it makes no difference." It 
cuts the nerve of his christian life and often in the end 
destroys it altogether; for human depravity is such 
tint he will be all too apt to follow out for himself the 
logic of this teaching. He will say, consciously or un- 
consciously, "If I am not bound to obey Christ in this 
matter why should I be in that, and in that, and again 
in that?" until he is really held to nothing and "his own 
sweet will" becomes his only rule of action. We are 
no more bound to obedience in repentance and faith 
than we are in baptism and church order, and if I can 



THE DISTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 21 

break one of the Lord's commands with impunity, I can 
safely break them all. 

Again, we believe that the Word of God was written 
for men, for all men, and not for ministers and priests 
only, and that every man, woman and child is at full 
liberty and under solemn obligation to read it and to 
interpret it, each for himself. The word of God is plain 
enough, so that any one who really wants to know what 
the will of God is can find out with but little trouble, 
and it will be no excuse for misbelief or misconduct that 
we have followed the interpretation of another, no matter 
how great a personage that other may have been. 

It is sometimes said that Doctor So and So teaches 
this or that, and "he is a great deal smarter than you or 
I," and therefore must know what it is right to do; but 
our reply to that should be that there is such a thing as 
being too "smart," and that when one gets to the point 
where he knows more about what is commanded than 
Jesus himself, who gave the command, he is altogether 
too "smart" for us to follow with safety. 

And here, by the way, we have come upon the reason 
of our so substantia] unity. We are united because we 
all believe the same thing, and believe it too, not 
because some one told us we must, but because we 
found it in the Word of God and in our heart of hearts 
accept it as the truth of God; and this is the only 
substantial basis of christian unity. "Can two walk 
together except they be agreed?" or can you fully sepa- 
rate them if they are agreed? Close proximity is not 
unity. The intimate association of people of discordant 
views and conflicting wishes is not harmony, as is 



22 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

shown sometimes in political conventions; neither can 
distance separate those whose hopes, whose fears, whose 
aims are one, whose convictions of truth are identical, 
and the ground of whose convictions is the sure word of 
God. Put the breadth of the earth between them and 
they are still in harmony with each other and no force 
can really separate them. That is the reason that this 
"rope of sand" has proven so strong. It is the strong- 
est possible bond. And this, too, is the only possible 
basis of christian unity. Let churches and christians 
everywhere throw away their human traditions, rules 
and creeds, and come at once to the inspired Word of 
God, and the present discord and division will presently 
cease. 

We have, therefore, no confession, discipline, cate- 
chism or creed, save a simple statement of what we 
believe the Bible to teach on some main points, and 
that was first published for the information of outsiders 
and to save ourselves from being misunderstood, and is 
still used as a convenient summary of our belief, but 
not as a church standard to which all must subscribe. 
To us, councils and synods and church fathers were 
only human and uninspired, and we base no article of 
our faith upon their findings. We are just as infallible 
as they, and indeed more so, for we have much light 
which they did not have and a better knowledge of the 
Word of God than was possible to them. The opinions 
of the Very Reverend Theophrastus Nonesuch, D. D., 
LL. D., have for us no authority and his threats no 
terror. "The teachings of the church" is an expression 
we never use, a sentiment we repudiate, and "the 



THE DISTINCTIVE PKINCIPLE. 23 

authority of Doctor So and So' 1 is to us an absurdity. 
"To the Law and to the Testimony; if they speak not 
according to this word it is because there is no light in 
them." 

We stand at one end of a logical line, the Koman 
Catholic church is at the other, and all other churches 
are between the two, although some are nearer to us 
and some are nearer to them. We regard the Bible as 
supreme authority and admit only what it requires; they 
regard the church as supreme authority and admit what 
they please. Either position is consistent with itself, 
although one or the other must be wrong. But all other 
churches are between the two, and in a position conse- 
quently, which is neither logical nor consistent. More- 
over, they differ much among themselves. Some have 
more Bible and less church and some have more church 
and less Bible, but among these there can never be 
agreement, for who shall arise with authority to declare 
just what proportion of each makes the right mixture? 
The attempts at christian union which have been made 
within the last few years are quite instructive on this 
point. To be consistent, one must go to one extreme 
or the other. As a Catholic priest once said to one of 
our pastors, "In the end they must either come over to 
us or else go over to you." 

But now, this is a bold stand to take, and we may 
properly be expected to furnish proofs. We think that 
a candid investigation into facts will reveal sufficient 
proofs, and we cordially invite the fullest investigation. 
Let us indicate some of the proofs. 

We mention first, the organization of our churches, 



24 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

their ordinances, doctrines and life. They will be found 
to be patterned exclusively after the New Testament 
model. We have no doctrines or ordinances that are 
not clearly taught in the New Testament, and we follow 7 
those ordinances and doctrines without expanding, 
curtailing or changing them. We do not believe in 
"developing" a practice until it becomes just the oppo- 
site of what it was intended to be, as has been the case 
with both the ordinances; the one having been "devel- 
oped" (to borrow a word from Dean Stanley) from a 
simple memorial by the believer of the sufferings of his 
Lord into a mysterious and miraculous sacrament, by 
partaking of which one may be helped to become a 
believer, or have some mysterious spiritual grace min- 
istered to his soul; and the other, from a symbol of the 
death of the believer with Christ and his resurrection 
to a newness of life, the sign of a regeneration 
already accomplished, to a rite by which the infant, 
incapable of faith or regenerating grace, becomes "re- 
generate and grafted into the body of Christ's church" 
as is declared in the Episcopal formula for the baptism 
of infants. It is our constant challenge thrown out to 
all the world to show us anything in our practice or 
belief which does not come directly from the New 
Testament; or to show us anything in the New Testa- 
ment which we have left out. 

We mention next our standard of discipline, which 
is the Bible alone. That is to say, in every so-called 
"heresy" trial, or in any delinquency of morals the 
reference is alw r ays directly to the Word of God. If a 
moral delinquency is involved, the charge is always that 



THE DISTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 25 

of immoral or unchristian conduct, and if "heresy," 
it is always that of unscriptural teaching. The specifi- 
cation is not that this is "contrary to article so and so 
of om* articles of faith," or to "page so and so of our 
book of discipline, 1 ' but that it is contrary to the teach- 
ings of the Scriptures, and by this standard is the 
matter settled. 

We mention again, the position always taken by a 
Baptist in any matter of controversy concerning religion, 
His appeal is always directly to the Bible. He may 
know little and certainly cares less what the commen- 
tators and church fathers have said about it, unless it 
be some matter of history or of fact which is to be 
settled by evidence outside of the Bible; neither does 
he quote the authority of some great man, living or 
dead, to substantiate his position. He has been taught 
to refer all religious questions directly to the Bible for 
solution and accept its voice as final. 

Again, we mention the advice always given to young 
converts when they ask for information on such matters 
as baptism and church membership, which is simply 
that they should read the New Testament on those 
points. It is the old question of Christ to that other 
young man who was seeking spiritual guidance, "How 
readest thou?" This is so well known that it is some- 
times called a Baptist trick. There are no others who 
dare to put the New Testament into the hands of their 
converts and tell them this: "Now read that book care- 
fully, candidly, prayerfully; then follow it. Listen to 
the voice of no man, no church, no book but that, and 
then go where it leads you, do the things therein laid 



26 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

down and unite with that church which seems to you 
to be the most like the one therein described." Other 
denominations dare not tell their converts this, for they 
know too well where they would go. It is too often 
their effort to persuade the young convert that he need 
not do the things therein laid down, and that he may 
follow men and books that teach things which are at 
variance with this book. 

A story from out West illustrates this so well that I 
may be pai'doned for repeating it. A missionary, who 
was not a Baptist, found an Indian out there who could 
read and gave him a Testament. After several weeks 
the Indian came to him declaring his belief in Christ 
and asking for baptism. The missionary questioned 
him, and finding that he was indeed converted, consented 
to baptize him. He therefore procured a bowl of water 
and was about to proceed when the Indian asked him 
what he was going to do with that. He replied that he 
was going to baptize him. "Ugh! no big enough" said 
he, "take Indian to river." The missionary then pro- 
ceeded to explain that "that isn't the way we do," that 
"the amount of water isn't essential," that the great 
majority of christians do not baptize in that way," and 
that it "made no difference if only his conscience were 
satisfied," &c, &c. The Indian listened patiently until 
he had finished, and then handed him back the Testa- 
ment with the remark, "You give Indian wrong book 
then\ me read um all through." 

But some one will say: "Do you mean to say that you 
are the only ones who receive the Bible as the Word of 
God!" O no, not by any means. No, indeed! What I 



THE DISTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 27 

mean to say is that we are the only ones who receive as 
authoritative nothing but the Bible. We receive the 
Bible and the Bible only ; others receive the Bible and 
something else, and it is just exactly that something 
else that makes all the mischief. It is that something 
else that has made all the corruption in church life, all 
the discord of to-day, and all the persecutions and 
atrocities of the days past. It was that something else 
that made the awful history of the Roman Catholic 
church and brought upon Europe the dark ages. It is 
that something else that makes all the false Christianity 
of to-day with its resulting scepticism and infidelity. It 
is that something else that is eating the life out of great 
christian churches and keeping them from being the 
strong spiritual forces they ought to be. Therefore we 
are afraid of it and will have none of it. What is in the 
book we are sure of, but what is not in the book — we do 
not know what it may lead to. We dare not take the 
risk; we will stick to the book. Why do we not have 
the things that others have, then? They are not in the 
book. Why no presiding elders or ruling elders? It is 
not in the book. Why no bishops, or baptism of babes, 
or consecration of altars, or vestments, or candles, or 
prayers for the dead, or any one of a hundred things 
that others have? They are not in the book, and that 
is the end of it. 

We mention as a further proof, the historical genesis 
of our churches as compared with that of others. They 
are not the product of the thinking of any uninspired 
man, but are built on the model of the New Testament. 
Luther in the progress of the Reformation found it 



28 



THE BAPTIST IN HISTOBY. 



necessary to establish a new church, and the Lutheran 
church of to-day is the result of his efforts at church 
building. He sought to throw off the Romish yoke and 
Romish corruptions; to make the gospel free to rich 
and poor alike and to bring the church back, in short, 
to what he considered to have been the true catholic 
standard before Romish corruptions crept in. The 
church in his mind was never anything but a universal 
organization under the protection of and co-extensive 
with the state; and Lutherans are the followers of Luther 
and his ideas. Calvin sought for a form of church 
government which should be strong and effective and 
yet Protestant. His plan was wrought out by a com- 
mission of six men appointed by the city government 
of Geneva and was modeled upon that government. Out 
of that Genevan church grew the whole Presbyterian 
system, with some necessary modifications and so the 
Presbyterian church is what it is, in its form, because 
the government of Geneva was what it was. Their 
claim of Apostolic origin and precedent is without 
foundation. Wesley did not at first intend to form any 
new church, but only to infuse new piety into the old 
church, and he himself lived and died in the Church of 
England; and so it came to pass that the founder of 
Methodism was himself never a Methodist. His aim 
was to work a reformation in the Established Church, 
but it resulted in forming a new church. And so every 
one of these churches, as well as almost every other 
existing church, can be traced as an historical move- 
ment back to some one man whose life and influence 
was its beginning. And these men, moreover, built 



THE DISTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 29 

mostly upon models of their own, not supposing, appar- 
ently, that the Lord himself had given any pattern of a 
church; it seems never to have occurred to them to 
search the New Testament for the model of a church 
organization. Having been always accustomed to 
ecclesiastical and episcopal or hierarchical forms, they 
did not think of anything different. 

But Baptist churches had no founder save the Founder 
of Christianity itself. They have had leaders, but no 
man ever stood to Baptist churches in the relation of 
Luther to the Lutheran, Calvin to the Presbyterian, or 
Wesley to the Methodist church. Their origin was 
different. The churches of the Apostles' day were such 
as are now called Baptist. They disappeared amid the 
corruptions of the early centuries. They sprang up 
again before the Reformation in scattered congregations 
here and there with different leaders and somewhat 
different practices. Becoming numerous, they again 
almost disappear before the fiery deluge of persecution 
by Catholic and Protestant alike. But again they 
re-appear in a company here and there who have read 
their Bibles and can not be satisfied with any of the 
forms of church life which they see around them, and 
from this point on they grow and multiply. Baptist 
churches are the result of a spontaneous gathering 
together of people of the same mind, actuated by 
Bible principles, but established by no man as their 
founder. 

This spontaneous origin is well illustrated by the 
history of the first modern Baptist churches in Germany, 
organized by Dr. J. G. Oncken in 1834 and onwards, 






30 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

by the history of the African Native Church, as given 
in the Baptist Missionary Magazine for December, 1899, 
and especially by the first Baptist church organized in 
the Island of Cuba, which was gathered by Dr. Alberto 
Diaz. This body of believers were desirous of forming 
a church organization yet could not adopt that of the 
churches by which they were surrounded, or of which 
they had knowledge. They therefore betook themselves 
to a prayerful study of the New Testament to see if 
they could find the pattern of a church therein. As a 
result of such study they agreed upon a simple organ- 
ization, electing a pastor and deacons and adopting the 
ordinances as they are given in the New Testament, 
without knowing that they were forming a Baptist church 
and were afterwards much surprised and delighted to find 
that they w T ere in entire accord and fellowship with a 
great body of christians in America and England called 
Baptists. The Cuban brethren had been organized 
into a Baptist church two years before they knew that 
they were Baptists. It is worth something to hear Dr. 
Diaz tell the story of their origin. 

Now, in contrasting the simplicity of Baptist organ- 
ization with that of other churches, the question is 
irresistibly suggested, have any of these things in 
which they differ from us been an improvement? Are 
they any stronger, any more harmonious, any more 
spiritual, any more efficient than we by reason of these 
things? Does their baptism of unconscious babes add 
anything to their strength? Is the wearing of gowns 
and the burning of candles any aid to the effective 
preaching of the gospel? Are bishops and presiding 






THE DISTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 31 

elders any aid to an independent manliness in the 
ministry? Does the following of church tradition 
rather than New Testament teaching deepen the spirit- 
uality of their members? Is the wisdom of synods and 
conferences and the laws of catechisms and books of 
discipline a better guide than the written Word and 
the independent leading. of the Holy Spirit? Are they 
better off with these things or are we better off with- 
out them? To us this is simply to ask whether man's 
way is wiser than God's way; to ask if the Holy Spirit 
did or did not really know what w 7 as best for all times 
and all places; and if he really did direct the Apostles 
in their establishing the visible forms of church life as 
well as in teaching them the truths of repentance, faith 
and sanctification. The question, it seems to us, needs 
no answer. 

The problem of the Baptist is, therefore, very simple. 
Jesus and his Apostles preached that men should trust 
in the Christ for their salvation; so therefore do we. 
When men trusted, then they baptized them, and what 
they did in baptizing them is very plain; they led them 
down into the water, they immersed them in the water, 
into the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy 
Spirit, they led them up out of the water, and that was 
the only "way of baptizing" they had. The modern 
way has been introduced without authority and retained 
without blessing. Then the believers, (who had been 
baptized, every one of them), commemorated the Lord's 
suffering in the "Lord's Supper' 1 , and these were their 
only ordinances; all this therefore we do also. Further- 
more we find that these baptized believers were gathered 



32 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

into bodies called churches, each with a pastor, or 
pastors, and deacons as their only officers, and that 
every church conducted its own affairs. Thus, there- 
fore, we form our churches. Then we find that they 
were taught to live godly in Christ Jesus, and this is 
all; all there is of it. 

All this, thus far, has come directly out of our 
distinctive principle as stated, namely: that Christ shall 
be supreme in his own church -and that we shall simply 
do what he requires. You will readily see that there 
are involved in this the following things, each of 
which is a cardinal doctrine of Baptist faith, and has 
been largely accepted by others also, namely: a spirit- 
ual church membership, that is, a membership made up 
of converted persons only, those who are actually born 
again; the baptism of believers only, and that baptism 
immersion; the Lord's supper for the baptized only; 
the freedom of every one to interpret the Bible for 
himself; the entire separation of church and state as 
occupying two distinct spheres; each church indepen- 
dent of every other; the equal right of every one in the 
church to a voice in its affairs; and the Word of God 
overshadowing and dominating all. This combination 
makes a Baptist church, and it is found in no other. 

Now, "If ye know these things, blessed are ye if ye 
do them." When the will of Christ has been expressed 
in all these matters, are we under no obligation to 
regard that will? They tell us that "there are Christians 
in all the churches," which is very true, as we are glad 
to know, but has nothing whatever to do with the case. 
They tell us "it is of no consequence," just as if anything 






THE DISTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 33 

that our Lord commands could be of no consequence. 
They tell us that it "makes no difference as long as 
our consciences are satisfied." But that would have 
justified Saul of Tarsus in his fierce hatred of the first 
christians, or the King of Moab in offering up his own 
son as a burnt offering, or the modern votary in the 
senseless mummeries of the Papal church. To us it 
does make a difference. When we consider the obliga- 
tion of obediently following our Lord, it does make a 
difference. When we see the fearful consequences of 
admitting the traditions of men, it does make a difference. 
When we consider that the tendency of men is always 
toward sin and that the danger is always that we shall 
drift away from Christ, it does make a difference, and we 
dare not depart from the Word. 

Then let others depart if they must and will; let them 
reject what is commanded and adopt what is not com- 
manded if they are bound so to do, and reap the 
inevitable fruit of it. Let them dispute and distress 
themselves if they must, over questions of human creeds 
and matters of man's invention; as for us, the way is 
easy and plain, for we "hear a voice behind us, saying: 
This is the way, walk ye in it." So have we ever aimed 
to do, so are we determined now to do, and that so we 
may ever do, help us Almighty God. 



"Lift up thine eyes round about and behold: ^.11 
these gather themselves together, and come to thee. 
tIs I live, saith the Lord, thou shall surely clothe 
thee icith them all as icith an ornament, and gird 
thyself icith them, like a bride. For, as for thy 
waste and thy desolate places and the land that 
hath been destroyed, surely note shalt thou be too 
strait for the inhabitants, and they that sic alloiced 
thee up shall be far away. The children of thy 
bereavement shall yet say in thine ears, The place 
is too strait for me: give place to me that I may 
dwell. Then shalt thou say in thine heart, Who 
hath begotten me these, seeing I have been be- 
reaved of my children, and am solitary, an exile, 
and wandering to and fro? and who hath brought 
up these? Behold I was left alone: these, where 
were they?" 



II. 



THE HISTORY OF BAPTISTS, 



Having described the Baptist, the question now to be 
answered is, Where in the records of the past do we 
find him? We cannot, however, attempt to give even 
a full outline of Baptist history for it is too long a tale. 
To give the story of eighteen centuries in an hour's 
discourse is altogether too large a task. Let me give 
only the merest sketch, together with some necessary 
cautions concerning it. 

I. We need to keep in mind from the beginning that 
Baptist history is not to be written upon the same plan 
as any other church history, for the reason that Baptist 
churches are not like any other church. It is not the 
history of an organization which can be traced from a 
definite beginning by definite steps to its present con- 
dition, neither is it the tracing of a name which has had 
at all times a definite meaning; for the name is compar- 
atively modern and has been applied on the one hand 
to those who were not Baptists, and on the other hand, 
many who were really such were not known by that 
name. It is the tracing of a principle which has been 



THE HISTOBICAL LINE. 37 

held by various bodies, sometimes with completeness 
and sometimes not, and sometimes in close association 
with other like bodies and sometimes by those who were 
isolated and widely scattered. 

The history of Presbyterianism, for example, is the 
history of a definite form of church government, always 
visible and easily traced, an organization beginning at 
a definite time and place, the origin and developement 
of which is fully recorded, and all the parts of which 
have an historical connection with all the rest. The 
same may be said of Episcopacy, Methodism, or Luth- 
eranism, as well as of smaller bodies, but it can not 
be said at all of us. These churches have come down 
to us like a lengthening chain, every link fast welded 
into the preceeding link, but Baptist churches are more 
like a load of bricks which have been picked up along 
the way, all alike because made in the same mold but 
each complete in itself and independent of all the rest. 

The effort to make out a Baptist succession is a failure. 
That is, to find a succession of churches, each descending 
from the preceding and reaching back to the days of 
the Apostles, so that a continuous line of them oan be 
affirmed to have existed from that time to this. Bearing 
in mind that in the early days few records were made, 
and the wholesale destruction of those that were made, 
it seems to me that to deny positively the existence of 
such a succession is going too far; but to assert it 
positively is to assert what can not be proved. The 
records of primitive times are very meager, and later 
persecutions were abundant, so that for generations 
Baptist movements were made mostly in secret and 



38 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

nothing was committed to paper which might betray 
them, and as has already been said, a full history of them 
can never be written; yet there are facts which seem to 
imply that the Baptist principle was much more 
extensively and tenaciously held and consistently 
carried out in those obscure periods than is generally 
supposed. There are enticing hints and suggestions of 
possibilities which one longs to follow out, but the 
materials are wanting. It is certain that there was a 
succession of christian bodies, known under different 
names and stretching down from the Apostles' day to 
this, who kept alive the truth of the gospel in its 
essential purity. They bore strong resemblance to 
those who were afterwards called by our name and 
emphasized now this and now that fundamental article 
of our faith; but we cannot find in them, at this late 
day and with the incompleteness of their record, a 
complete harmony with our beliefs. The stream of 
pure truth continued to flow, taking the name of now 
this and now that able leader and gospel worker. They 
were always persecuted and always therefore, in obscur- 
ity. If quiet and opportunity had been given to them 
to organize and develop a formal life, doubtless they 
would have shown a close likeness to the New Testament 
pattern. All we can say is that we cannot clearly trace 
this pattern from the beginning in the records that 
are now left to us. There may have been a Baptist 
succession but no man can now prove it; and it is but 
fair to say that the more investigation brings to light 
new facts, the less likely it seems that such succession 
in the strict sense can be found. 



THE HISTORICAL LINE. 39 

But we do not depend for our authority upon an 
ecclesiastical pedigree, nor upon grace that seems to 
reside in the clothes, being put on and off with priestly 
garments, but upon the authority of the Word of God 
and upon grace that is ministered directly to the 
believing soul, the Holy Spirit making valid that which 
is done in his name and for his glory independently of 
ordaining hands and priestly vestments. He is in the 
true apostolic succession who has the apostolic spirit 
and teaches apostolic principles and truths, and that 
is an apostolic church which is built upon the New 
Testament model, even though it have had no prede- 
cessor for a thousand years. Indeed, the church that 
can trace its history back through visible organizations 
to the days of the Apostles proves thereby that it is 
not &n apostolic church; for these visible organizations 
have been full of apostacy, unspirituality, false doctrine 
and all uncleanness. And why need any one be anxious 
to claim an apostolic succession that must needs run 
back through such monsters of iniquity as Pope Alex- 
ander VI, or such a murderer of heretics as Innocent 
III, or even such a political schemer as Gregory VII, 
or one of such grasping ambition as Gregory the Great? 
Kather let us glory that our spiritual ancestors were 
too pure and true to be the companions of such as 
these, and were among those who by reason of their 
real godliness were driven into the wilderness. 

And right here I wish to protest most emphatically 
against the misnaming of much that is called church 
history, and insist that it is not the history of the church 
of Christ at all. For a thousand years it is the history 






40 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

of a corrupt, oppressive, and sometimes unspeakably 
vile religio-political organization, which never had for 
its real aim the teaching of the true principles of 
Christ's gospel and the uplifting and saving of men's 
souls. It is the history of a hierarchy oppressing and 
deluding the people, of the teaching of superstition 
continually made worse and worse, of liberty destroyed, 
of ignorance made more dense, of tyranny both civil 
and spiritual made more tyrannical, and a blasphemous 
usurpation by men of prerogatives that belong only to 
God. To call this "church" history is surely keen 
sarcasm, careless handling of names, or utter ignorance. 
Let it be frankly admitted that in this organization 
were many holy men at various times and that out of 
it have come men whose names will be glorious for all 
time, yet it remains true that they did not shape its 
policy nor control its course, and that they themselves 
were much blinded and hindered in their struggles for 
purity and usefulness by its influence. The real church 
history is to be found in the largely unrecorded struggles 
of those who never recognized this institution, and the 
heroes of the church are to be found in the appalling 
list of those who suffered from its fury. 

Yet, even if there be no Baptist succession in the 
sense of a lineal descent of churches, it is quite possible 
that there never was a time when there were not some- 
where Baptist churches; not exact counterparts of 
those of to-day, but in all essential principles the same. 
When they failed in one place they had sprung up in 
another, and so the various movements overlap each 
other in point of time, though widely separated in 



THE HISTORICAL LINE. 41 

point of locality and not, as far as can be discovered, 
vitally connected with each other. 

II. It is supposed by many that Baptists have no 
history; that they are a modern sect founded by Roger 
Williams, or perhaps originating in England about the 
year 1600 with one Smythe who is said to have baptized 
himself, or at the farthest running back to the fanatical 
so-called Anabaptists of Munster. But this is an 
entire mistake. They are really the most venerable 
body of christians, as to age, in existence, for their 
continuous traceable history runs back for centuries 
beyond that of any other existing church, (except the 
Roman Catholic, and that is not in any proper sense a 
church), and in their detached and independent history 
they run back to the very beginnings of churches. In 
the face of so much glorifying of antiquity and vaunting 
of the history of other bodies, let me say it again, that 
the Baptists are several hundred years older than any 
other existing christian body. There were thousands 
of Baptist churches before ever there was an Episcopal, 
a Lutheran, a Congregational, a Methodist, or a Pres- 
byterian church. Not that we are any the purer or 
more spiritual today for that, but if antiquity is the 
test of respectability, let us understand that we can be 
very respectable. And more than that, their leaders, 
for breadth of mind, clearness of insight, and purity of 
life, have been second to none; their principles have 
been broader, their aims truer, and their final achieve- 
ments grander than any. While others have been 
hampered by narrow views or selfish considerations, 
they have wrought for all men and for all times, and in 



42 THE BAPTIST IN HlSTOttt. 

the great struggle for human right and human liberty 
they have led the van which others have followed and 
have been in the fore front of that conflict of w T hich 
others have enjoyed the results. 

Compare this with other movements. The Presby- 
terian movement has perhaps been as wide in its 
development and influence as any other modern 
religious movement, but it carried within itself the 
seeds of oligarchy, developing into" narrow intolerance 
when it gained the predominance, and as a religious 
force, seeking intellectual rather than spiritual power, 
culture rather than conversion, and so seeking flowers 
from a seed not yet planted, the culture of a plant not 
yet produced. The Methodist movement w T as a revival 
of religious force and was greatly useful in emphasizing 
the value of practical godliness, preaching the doctrines 
of repentance with great power; but it came compara- 
tively late in the day, it was monarchical in form and 
spirit and it has largely lost its primitive force and 
power by the working out of principles within itself. 
It is strong in numbers and as an aggressive organization 
but weakened and weakening in its genuine spiritual 
force. Congregationalism has never developed such a 
force and power as other movements have and its 
influence has been mostly confined to England and 
America. It is a striking fact that while it was the 
first church to be well established in America, it now 
numbers only about 630,000, while the Presbyterians' 
number one and a half millions, the Baptists more than 
four millions and the Methodists of various sorts more 
than five millions. Episcopacy simply meant a division 



TtlE HISTORICAL LINE. 43 

of the Papacy and the formation of an independent and 
reformed wing of it into a separate church. Luther- 
anism was a reformation of the Papacy and has resulted 
in a system which, practically, is but little nearer the 
saving gospel truth than is the Papacy itself, although 
not by any means so gross in its doctrines and influence. 
Each of these was, in itself and in its time, a grand 
movement and a great advance upon what had gone 
before it, and it is not at all my purpose to belittle them, 
but only to say that Baptists have wrought for a grander 
principle and have toiled in a more universal struggle 
than they all. They have contended for the complete 
supremacy of Christ over all men and all things in his 
church; for a spiritual church which should be a 
spiritual power; for the absolute right of every man to 
absolute liberty of conscience in all things, and for 
freedom for him, not only from outside oppression but 
from domination even by his own church. These may 
seem like idle words of denominational glorification but 
they are not so intended; they are the result of long 
thought and study upon the fundamental principles of 
church life and their practical working out, as seen not 
only in the history, but also in the every day life and 
work of the various religious bodies around us. They 
are the statement of a deliberate judgment of the facts. 
While others glorify themselves and thank God because 
they are this or that, let me speak out my honest 
convictions and say that I am proud of my spiritual 
ancestry, that as I read their history I am thrilled by 
their deeds, and that I am more than ever determined 
to stand by their principles. 



44 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

III. A word needs to be said also about the misrepre- 
sentations of our history, although it is a topic we 
might well wish to omit, and it requires some grace to 
speak of it calmly. What a mess of stuff indeed, has 
the world received for Baptist history, and for how long! 
It is but within comparatively few years that the truth 
has become known, and not yet with any fulness. 
There is a plain reason for this misrepresentation; the 
truth is hard to get at and those who have written have 
not cared to take the trouble to get at it. The works 
of our Baptist authors, except the more modern ones, 
have perished, and we have for our guidance for the 
most part only the story of their enemies. Even in the 
works of such great historians as Mosheim there is 
evident the spirit of bitterness and unfairness. The 
descriptions of their lives, beliefs and deeds were 
written by men who both could not and would not 
understand them; could not, because too narrow and 
unspiritual to understand them or their teachings, and 
would not because too bitter in their hatred and 
antagonism. Their history was written by the men who 
drowned them and tortured them and burned them, and 
did it because of a jealous hatred of them; and this is 
taken for Baptist history! Of how much credence is it 
worthy? Their own records are gone — burned with 
their bodies — and only hidden remnants remain. Their 
books were everywhere sought out and destroyed. No 
public library would receive and preserve them and 
what few copies were hidden and thus preserved perished 
in various ways. Of most of their works we know but 
the titles and these are preserved to us only in the 



THE HISTORICAL LINE. 45 

writings of their enemies. Their record is to be found 
only in stray notices here and there, in the records of 
the Inquisition, in the written files of courts of judg- 
ment where they were examined and condemned, in 
musty local registers, and in the attacks of their opposers; 
and to write their history and write it truly requires 
great patience, wide research and much study. Of 
how much value would be the history of the abolition 
of slavery written by some angry, disappointed slave- 
holder? or a history of Prohibition written by John 
Gund, or the editor of the "Wine and Spirit Gazette?" 
or a life of General Thomas J. Morgan, late United 
States Indian Commissioner, written by Monseigneur 
Satolli or "Father" Cleary the Catholic priest of Minne- 
apolis, who has publicly called him a fool and a knave 
and a liar and several other not very pretty things? 
Would you expect an honest appreciation of motives or 
an unbiased judgment as to results from such writers 
as these? Hardly. Of how much value as American 
history would be a rehearsal of the lies and mud-slinging 
of successive political campaigns? Of just as much 
value as some of the representations of the Baptists. 

Thus it is believed by many that they have always been 
an ignorant and bigoted people, and Baptists because 
they were ignorant and bigoted; that the early Baptists 
of our own country were men of no intelligence or 
power, and that all the intellectual force and broad- 
minded intelligence was in the other denominations; 
that the madmen of Munster were Baptists, and the 
characteristic type of Baptists of their day, and that 
their abominations of fanaticism, nakedness, polygamy 



46 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

and riot were the result of Baptist teaching. Thomas 
Muntzer and Balthazer Hubmeyer are supposed to have 
been the leaders of these fanatics, the similarity of 
Munster and Muntzer perhaps, having confused the 
two. But Muntzer never was a Baptist. Although he 
held some doctrines similar to theirs he opposed them 
in more. He was sometimes a Lutheran and sometimes 
a Catholic and he had been dead for several years when 
these things happened. He did, indeed, deny the 
scripturalness of infant baptism, but continued to 
practice it to the day of his death. Hubmeyer never had 
any connection with the Munsterites either, for he 
likewise had been dead several years. The wildest 
excesses of Munster were due to Rothman, a Lutheran 
pastor. The strongest protest was made against these 
fanatics by the two hundred Baptists who dwelt there, 
until by their opposition one fourth of them lost their 
lives and the rest were driven from the city.* Likewise 
the principles and teachings of these fanatics were 
repudiated both before and after the Munster uproar, 
by the great majority of Anabaptists throughout 
Europe. Often in their examinations under arrest we 
read the question whether they were not the people 
who were engaged in these things and who, if they should 
come to power, would murder the rulers and revolution- 
ize society, and always the reply that they were not of 
those people and that they considered their teaching and 
their doings wicked and wrong and not according to the 
teachings of the gospel. 

The real cause of the Munster kingdom was this: — 
In the cruel oppression which they suffered, these 

* Armitage, Hist. Bap. p. 375. 



THE HISTORICAL LINE. 47 

people saw no hope of relief from any earthly source, 
and believing themselves to be the people of God, and 
fired with the example of old Testament worthies, they 
turned to a belief in the interposition of heaven. The 
doctrine of the immediate coming of Christ to put down 
his enemies and exalt his people strongly appealed to 
their hope and their imagination. It needed only the 
fiery eloquence of misguided leaders, who misinterpreted 
prophecy, to persuade them to set up a heavenly king- 
dom in preparation for Christ's immediate coming, and 
the natural passions of men, which always come to the 
front in times of religious fanaticism, did the rest. The 
whole movement can be traced directly to the wrong 
teaching of certain leaders as to the nature of the 
kingdom of God and the immediate advent of Christ. 

The peasants 1 war has also been laid at the door of 
the Anabaptists, but surely if ever a people had righteous 
cause for rebellion these peasants had, and in the begin- 
ning they were upheld by all the reformers, including 
Luther himself, although afterwards he reviled them 
and called for their butchery in terms most heartless 
and brutal. That they sympathized in this struggle for 
liberty is very true, as they have always sympathized in 
every such struggle, and that some of them were engaged 
in it is also true, and that it took on a semi-religious 
character; but it was occasioned by the cruelty and op- 
pression of the lords and nobles and not by religious 
teaching. It was the struggle of a down trodden people 
for their natural rights, and a brutal struggle because 
they had been brutalized and degraded by their oppres- 
sion. 



48 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

The truth is, that every movement hostile to the ruling 
power and every one who by any difference of belief 
became obnoxious to the ruling church was dubbed 
indiscriminately "Anabaptist," so that the name came 
to include both those sober, pious folk who were really 
Baptists on the one hand, and the wildest, most visionary 
fanatics on the other, and the good suffered for the bad. 
The effect of the Munster uproar was to arouse such a 
hatred of everything that was called Anabaptist that 
their persecution was renewed with redoubled violence, 
and they were hunted to the death indiscriminately; 
and to this day Baptists are despised because of Munster. 
Professor Vedder says, "Many w T ho were called by this 
title were never Anabaptists but practiced pedobaptism 
as consistently as any Lutheran or Romanist of them 
all." He further says: "The Anabaptists were de- 
nounced by their contemporaries, Romanist and Protes- 
tant alike, with a rhetoric so sulphurous that an evil 
odor has clung to the name ever since. If one were to 
believe half he reads about these heretics, he would be 
compelled to think them the most depraved of mankind. 
Nothing was too vile to be ascribed to them, nothing 
was too wicked to be believed about them, nothing in 
fact, was incredible except one had described them as 
God-fearing, pious folk, studious of the scriptures and 
obedient to the will of their Lord as that will was made 
known."* 

Is it any wonder that one should boil over with 
indignation to find himself in sympathy with a people 
whom he admires, whose principles are also dear to him, 
who are his own spiritual ancestors, and to find them 

* Short History, p. 86. 



THE HISTORICAL LINE. 49 

so traduced, misrepresented, belittled and despised by 
those who never had their nobility of character, and 
their achievements calmly appropriated by those who 
have no word of sympathy for their sufferings ? But the 
truth of their history is beginning to appear and the 
world will at last do them justice. 

IV. To trace the history of Baptists, we are to look 
for those who held to the supreme authority of the 
Bible and discarded the authority of "the church," to a 
spiritual church membership, the baptism of believers 
only, the absolute freedom of conscience, and therefore 
entire freedom from the control of the civil government 
in religious matters; in short, for those who believed 
what we believe and did what we do in all essential 
particulars. 

First, then, it is not an assumption of bigotry but 
the statement of a simple fact to say that the apostolic 
churches were Baptist churches. It is not mere denom- 
inational buncomb to speak of the first organized church 
as "the First Baptist Church of Jerusalem," as is 
sometimes done by way of pleasantry, for if it were 
exactly reproduced in Jerusalem today it would certainly 
by common consent be called a Baptist church. It 
surely would not be called Methodist or Episcopal or 
Presbyterian. Certainly those first churches were 
immersed churches, and converted churches, and they 
had pastors and deacons as their only officers, and their 
government was democratic, and they had no other law 
than the will of Christ made known to them by the 
teaching of the Apostles, directly and by inspiration, 
which teaching, afterwards written down, became our 



50 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

New Testament. They baptized no infants, they wore 
no gowns, they burned no candles, they worshipped no 
eucharist, they confessed to no priest, they held no 
synods for the government of the churches. 

But these churches became gradually corrupted, and 
more rapidly than we would think possible. Those 
were days of ignorance, of strongly intrenched heathen 
notions on the one hand, and Jewish notions on the 
other. Foolish and conceited heathen philosophy 
sought to explain all things and it was inevitable that 
the churches should soon become corrupted by these 
things when the Apostles were dead. The only wonder 
is that Christianity ever survived at all. It would have 
been different perhaps, if then as now general intelli- 
gence had been high and if every one had been able to 
have and read a printed Bible, and so by constant com- 
parison with the recognized standard constantly to 
correct himself in his thought and his practice. But 
when the New Testament was written it was only to be 
found in single gospels and epistles here and there, and 
when gathered up in one volume was only reproduced by 
the manual labor of writing, and copies of it were so 
costly that the scriptures were not possessed by the 
majority of christians. In that case, people were mostly, 
dependent on their pastors for their knowledge of the 
Bible and the interpretation of it. The weight of great 
names gave currency to wrong interpretations. Sad 
errors in regard to almost every important doctrine 
crept into the early church and men of influence gave 
them currency. We see what is the influence of promi- 
nent men in the spread of error in our enlightened days. 



THE HISTORICAL LINE. 51 

These leading men, too, were not free from worldly ambi- 
tions and very soon were contending with each other as 
to relative influence, which contentions finally crystal- 
lized into claims of authority. As the doctrines of the 
new birth and baptism were perverted, both churches 
and leaders grew less spiritual and more ambitious, less 
genuine and more formal, the contention for supremacy 
grew sharper, until finally a few, then two, and at last 
one gained recognition as chief; and so began and so 
grew up the Papacy. 

But no corruption was ever fastened upon the churches 
without a protest from some pure minds and a struggle, 
and there were various attempts to preserve the 
primitive purity which resulted in bodies of various 
names and holding more or less of Baptist principles, 
but often less. Such were the Montanists, the Novatians, 
the Donatists, and many others of various names, of 
whom it has been claimed by some that they were 
Baptists altogether and by others that they were Bap- 
tists not at all. The truth lies between the two, but 
most of them held errors that set them outside the 
fellowship of Baptist churches. There is a gap of nearly 
a thousand years in the traceable Baptist succession on 
the continent of Europe, until we come to the Petro- 
brusians about the year 1125. Here, four hundred years 
before the Reformation, we come upon those who were 
clearly Baptists. During this period of a thousand years 
there are traces and probabilities or possibilities only 
of pure churches, but no definite record. That a 
primitive and pure Christianity was preserved in central 
Europe all this time, hidden away in the forests and 



52 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

mountains, is almost positively certain, but that it was 
in all respects Baptistic we cannot show. This region 
was the rendezvous for the remnants of persecuted 
righteousness from many quarters, and as an abundant 
harvest presupposes a broad seed sowing, so the great 
crop of Anabaptists that sprang up all over central 
Europe just before and during the Reformation leads 
to the very strong presumption that there must have 
been many antecedent teachers and preachers of their 
doctrines of whom we know nothing. The truth is that all 
Christendom seems to have gone off, during this period, 
into such corruptions of life and doctrine as left little 
semblance of true Christianity in it. The records of 
the early centuries are astounding in their revelations 
and if the primitive faith was anywhere preserved, it 
must have been in some out of the way place where 
current opinions and practices had little influence. 
Very much of Christianity was only a baptized paganism, 
and the reports of the "conversion" of nations and the 
"baptism" of whole tribes at once show the spuriousness 
of it. About all there was of their "conversion" was 
their "baptism." 

This gap is spanned according to a recent book, "The 
Ancient British and Irish Churches," by the work of 
"Saint" Patrick and his followers, whom the author 
makes out to be substantially Baptist. We might 
sincerely wish the claim made in this book could be 
verified but an impartial investigation shows that it is 
groundless. The early British and Irish history is very 
interesting and contains many names which are famous 
for missionary work. Among these are Patrick, Co- 






THE HISTOBICAL LINE. 53 

lumba, Ninian, Kentigern, Columbanus, Caedmon, the 
first Anglo-Saxon poet, Aidan, and finally that long 
suffering young Irish woman, Brigit. The gospel seems 
to have been first preached in Great Britain about the 
year 63, or at least during the first century, but by 
whom we do not know. It has been credited in turn to 
Joseph of Arimathea, Simon Zelotes, Paul, Philip the 
Apostle, Peter, James the- son of Zebedee, Aristobulus, 
and I do not know how many more, none of whom 
probably ever saw the country. It is more likely that 
some earnest trader or christian soldier first gave the 
gospel to the island. The one thing clear from the 
various traditions and also from subsequent history, is 
that the origin of British Christianity was from the far 
East and not from Borne. There had been more than 
one mighty christian movement in Britain and Ireland 
before the first Bomish emisaries were sent there, and 
the primitive character of its Christianity is attested by 
the cool reception they met when they did come and by 
the struggle maintained for several hundred years before 
Borne gained full control. The gospel took a strong 
hold upon Britain and spread rapidly, and during the 
persecutions of the Boman emperors Britain furnished 
its martyrs and christian heroes in common with other 
lands, although less in number because more remote. 
Out of this vigorous British Christianity was raised up 
the great apostle to Ireland, Patrick. 

Patrick was a Briton whose father Calpurnius was a 
deacon, and he was born near Dumbarton, now in 
Scotland, probably about the year 360. Thus this early 
British Christianity furnished an evangelist for Ireland, 



54 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

which in turn evangelized much of Scotland and part 
of England and wrought a great work upon the conti- 
nent. So. curiously enough, the great patron saint of 
all the Irish, the saint by whom every Irishman swears, 
(and he would swear harder yet if he knew it), was an 
Englishman. And still further, the Irish of his day 
were Scotchmen, being the original Scots, and the 
original Scotchmen were Irishmen, for they came from 
Ireland and cpnquered the native" Picts, giving their 
name to the country now called Scotland. Again, 
Patrick has been sainted by the Roman Catholic 
church, but in all his life he never heard of it nor ever 
acknowledged any Pope; and indeed, the records call 
Mm "papa Patrick;" i. e. Pope Patrick. For along time 
he and his work were ignored by the Papacy because 
he was not a Romanist, but finally all was claimed and 
Patrick himself canonized as a Romish Saint. 

At the age of sixteen he was captured by a band of 
marauding Irish and for six years experienced the 
hardships of slavery, herding swine and exposed to all 
weathers. After his escape and return home he had a 
vision of a man from Ireland and heard a voice of the 
Irish people calling him to come and dwell with them, 
and after the most strenuous opposition from relatives 
and friends, about the year 396, (though some give the 
date as late as 430), he began to preach the gospel in 
Ireland. He was a man of apostolic zeal, untiring 
energy and magnetic power, brave, unselfish and loving. 
He aimed to give the gospel to the whole island and his 
wonderful success was such that a large part of the 
island was evangelized. There were a few christian 






THE HISTORICAL LINE. 55 

churches already established before his time, but in 
comparison with the work he did they receive but little 
attention. He is said to have erected seven hundred 
churches and ordained the same number of bishops; 
another account says three hundred and sixty-five 
churches; the facts of his life are not all clear and 
accounts differ. Twelve thousand are said to have been 
baptized at one time and other great baptisms are 
credited to him. 

This was a truly missionary work, and the missionary 
spirit remained with it after Patricks death. There 
grew up great schools or monasteries such as at Durrow, 
Bangor, Derry, and Iona, some of which were attended 
by as many as three thousand students at one time. 
In these monasteries teachers and preachers were 
trained, and from them Southern Scotland was evan- 
gelized and many missionaries were sent into England, 
France and Germany. By the middle of the eighth 
century these missionary churches were predominant 
throughout the whole Rhine valley and the entire 
South and West of Germany. As we look at the Ireland 
of our day, it does not seem possible that it should have 
been, and for centuries, the center of christian influence 
and missionary activity for all northern Europe, but so 
it was.- 

Now as to the practice and teaching of Patrick and 
his followers, it is not easy to get at the exact truth. 
He was not himself well educated and left but two short 
writings which have come down to us, one, his "con- 
fession" or self defense, and the other an "epistle to 
Caroticus," a marauding Welsh chief who had carried 



56 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

off many of Patrick's "baptized christians.'* His only 
baptism was immersion, but that counts for nothing 
because no other was known in his day, sprinkling and 
pouring not having yet come into use except for sick 
people. He recognized three orders in the clergy, 
namely, deacons, presbyters and bishops, which last 
seem not to have been bishops in the New Testament 
sense of the term nor yet in the modern sense of it. 
His schools were of a monastic type and seem to have 
developed later into genuine monasteries. There is no 
trace of infant baptism but that delusion had not yet 
become general. He seems to have made everything of 
baptism after the fashion of those days, to the extent 
that baptism and conversion were practically the same. 
In his day baptism was Christianity and Christianity 
was baptism, and it was profoundly venerated as a holy 
mystery. Emphasis was laid on this rather than on the 
love of Grod to sinners and the necessity of anew birth. 
His wholesale baptisms look very suspicious. His 
method of work seems to have been to "convert" a chief 
and then "baptize" his whole tribe, or as many as would 
submit to the ordinance. The warlike character of 
these "christian" Irish shows the spuriousness of their 
conversion, for their history for centuries is the history 
of tribal jealousies, treacheries and massacres. Patrick 
seems to have had monks and "virgins" and after his 
day Ireland was full of them. There still exist plain 
proofs of hermit monks who lived in small cells from 
which they could see nothing but the sky and out of 
which they never came. * 

The earliest accounts of Patrick extant were written 

* See "Ireland and the Celtic Church" by Dr. G. T. Stokes. 



THE HISTOBICAL LINE. 57 

more than two hundred years after his death although 
embodying perhaps an earlier account, and they are so 
full of the absurdly miraculous as to discredit their 
facts. All sorts of miracles are ascribed to this "holy 
saint,' 1 such as kindling a fire by blowing upon a heap 
of ice which he had gathered when they had no wood; 
killing a heathen magician a la Ananias and Saphira; 
raising a dead man whom he heard groaning under 
ground, (the grave was a hundred and twenty feet long), 
and finding he was suffering in hell, he preached to him, 
baptized him and sent him back to heaven. He gathered 
all the reptiles in Ireland upon the top of a hill and 
drove them all down through a ravine into the sea with 
"the staff of Jesus" which had been given him by the 
Lord on some island in the Mediterranean Sea; — one 
of the most remarkable round-ups on record. Reluc- 
tantly we withdraw our claim, but facts compel us to 
admit that Patrick was not a Baptist. If his work and 
that of his successors had been genuine gospel work 
and true to gospel principles, Ireland, largely free from 
influences which elsewhere corrupted the truth, and 
under better conditions than other lands for preserving 
New Testament Christianity, would surely have had a 
different religious history than is written of her. 

There remains, however, an interesting branch of 
British history which may show more Baptistic charac- 
teristics. By the invasion of the Saxons, primitive 
Christianity was early driven into the fastnesses of 
Wales where, it is claimed, it has existed to the present 
time in its purity. If this is true it will go far to 
establish a Baptist succession but we fear that thorough 



58 THE BAPTIST IN HlSTOEY. 

investigation will show that this too was vitiated by the 
errors of priestly ordination and baptismal regeneration 
which were nearly or quite universal in the early 
centuries. Welsh Baptists have always claimed for 
themselves an apostolic origin, and it will gratify our 
denominational pride if they can prove it. It is certain 
that primitive Christianity continued there for centuries 
from the beginning and also we can trace our churches 
back from the present for centuries; but will the records 
span the gap? 

But now we return to the continent of Europe, where 
we begin to hear the rumble of the Reformation, to find 
in France another Baptistic people called Petrobrusians 
from their leader, Peter of Bruys, who was burned 
alive in 1126. The Petrobrusians were unmistakably 
Baptists in their doctrines, their practices and their 
spirit. They were democratic in their organization, 
they baptized believers only, rejecting infant baptism 
as folly because an infant could exercise no faith, their 
only authority was the Bible and their great doctrine 
was salvation through faith in Christ alone. Their 
immersion excited no comment because the whole 
Catholic church at that time practiced it, but they were 
immersionists. Peter of Bruys was no more learned 
than Peter the apostle, but like him was full of the 
Holy Spirit and through him "much people turned to 
the Lord,' 1 burning their images and crosses and 
forsaking the Romish priests and places of worship. 
Thus the stream of Baptist influence begins again, to 
run with increasing breadth and power until checked 
and dried up by the fires of persecution which raged 



THE HISTOEICAL LINE. 59 

fiercely during and after the Beformation times. 

Following the Petrobrusians were the Waldenses. 
Peter Waldo was converted to Christ in 1160 and began 
his work in the modern Baptist fashion of preaching 
and translating the Bible into the language of the 
common people. Persecution soon scattered the Wald- 
ensians into numberless sects, scarcely any two of 
which were alike, some of whom held quite closely to 
Baptist principles, but the most agreed more closely 
with Roman Catholic doctrines during the early part of 
their history at least. Afterwards they came to hold 
more scriptural views. But they were preachers of the 
gospel and colporters of the Bible. They went every- 
where as peddlers of fabrics and gems and thus found 
opportunity to distribute bibles. Whittier has pictured 
the Waldensian peddler as he went about on his mis- 
sionary work, in his beautiful poem "The Vaudois 
Teacher," a poem so beautiful that I quote it all: — 

4t O lady fair, these silks of mine are beautiful and rare, — 

The richest web of the Indian loom, which beauty's queen might 

wear; 
And my pearls are pure as thy own fair neck, with whose radiant 

light they vie; 
I have brought them with me a weary way,— will my gentle lady 

buy?" 

And the lady smiled on the worn old man through the dark and 

clustering curls 
Which veiled her brow as she bent to view his silks and glittering 

pearls; 
And she placed their price in the old man's hand, and lightly turned 

away, 
But she paused at the wanderer's earnest call,— "My gentle lady, 

stay!" 



60 THE BAPTIST IN HlSTOKY. 

"O lady fair I have yet a gem which a purer luster flings, 

Than the diamond flash of the jewelled crown on the lofty brow of 

kings,— 
A wonderful pearl of exceeding price, whose virtue shall not decay, 
Whose light shall be a spell to thee and a blessing on thy way!" 

The lady glanced at the mirroring steel where her form of grace was 

seen, 
Where her eye shone clear, and her dark locks waved their clasping 

pearls between; 
"Bring forth thy pearl of exceeding worth, thou traveller gray and 

old; 
And name the price of thy precious gem, and my page shall count 

thy gold." 

The cloud went off from the pilgrim's brow, as a small and meagre 

book, 
Unchased with gold or gem of cost, from his folding robe he took. 
"Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price, may it prove as such to thee! 
Nay — keep thy gold — I ask it not, for the Word of God is free!" 

The hoary traveller went his way, but the gift he left behind 
Hath had its pure and perfect work on that high born maiden's mind, 
And she hath turned from the pride of sin to the lowliness of truth, 
And given her human heart to God in its beautiful hour of youth! 

And she hath left the gray old halls, where an evil faith had power, 
And courtly knights of her father's train, and the maidens of her 

bower; 
And she hath gone to the Vaudois vales, by lordly feet untrod, 
Where the poor and needy of earth are rich in the perfect love of God ! 

It is no wonder that the preaching of the gospel was 
so joyfully received by the people, for it was to them 
a new story entirely. They knew only forms and 
ceremonies, tithes and penances, and the offer of a full 
and free salvation through simple trust in Christ was as 
new and blessed truth to them as to the veriest heathen. 
It was to them as the preaching of the gospel has lately 






THE HISTORICAL LINE. 61 

been to the people of Cuba and Puerto Rico, so lately 
freed from Spanish and priestly oppression, and we have 
seen how eagerly it is accepted there. 

The Petrobrusians and Waldenses seem to have been 
the immediate ancestors of the Anabaptists, who soon 
sprang up over Europe and thickest where they had 
been thickest. No definite origin can be assigned to 
the Anabaptists nor can we tell by whom the name was 
first given. They were not a new kind of people but 
the old kind under a new name, and they were doubtless 
only the spiritual descendants of those who before them 
had taught the pure gospel; but they multiplied exceed- 
ingly until the country was filled with them. In 
northern Switzerland they increased marvellously in 
the few years following 1520, as indeed also in Germany 
and Holland, and developed leaders who were worthy 
to rank with the martyrs of the past. Such were the 
noble Hubmeyer who was burned alive March 10, 1528; 
Blaurock, burned at the stake in the year following; 
Hetzer, beheaded in the same year; Felix Mantz, 
drowned in 1527; Sattler, torn with red hot pincers and 
burned in the same year; and Grebel, who, for a wonder, 
died a natural death. 

Zwingli himself began his career with a declaration 
of the fundamental Baptist principle that demands 
obedience to the word of God in all matters of faith and 
rejects what is not therein contained, but when he began 
to see where this principle would lead him he refused 
to follow it. He soon saw that in following this princi- 
ple he must reject infant baptism, baptize only believers, 
have a church composed of those only who had personal 



62 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

faith in Christ, and cut loose entirely from the powers 
of the world as to the support of his work, Luther 
also came to the same place and in like manner turned 
back. Both these reformers wished to return to Bible 
Christianity, but both depended upon the civil power 
to bring it to pass. They had not enough faith in God, 
in the simple power of the truth and in the conscientious 
honesty of the people to cut loose from the world and 
go forth, as did the Apostles, in the power of the Holy 
Spirit. The Anabaptists did have, and they wrought 
grandly even unto death, while these reformers turned 
back to lean upon the unsanctified arm of human power 
— and spoiled their work; and Europe is what it is 
to-day, spiritually formal and dead, because the Ref- 
ormers prevailed and the Anabaptists were destroyed. 

From Switzerland we follow this movement into Ger- 
many where also "mightily grew the word of God and 
prevailed." They spread over Bavaria; in Silesia infant 
baptism became almost extinct; in Augsburg their 
church numbered eight hundred members in 1527, and 
eleven hundred a few years later when they had for 
their leader the noble and distinguished John Denck. 
We can not follow their growth in detail, but suffice 
it to say that they were found in almost every province 
and city and often in great numbers, until their rapid 
increase seemed likely to overturn the state church, and 
led to their bitter persecution and final extinction. 
The story of their horrible persecution and cold blooded 
murder is too sickening to follow in detail but we shall 
see something of it in our next lecture; a people godly 
and true, peaceable and honest, harried and hunted like 



THE HISTORICAL LINE. 63 

wild beasts until there was nothing of them remaining. 

The remant that escaped from Germany took refuge 
in Holland where they were known as Mennonites f rom 
the name of their leader, Menno Simon, and where, 
partly from their change of name and partly from their 
obscurity, they were suffered for a time to dwell more 
securely, though afterwards they suffered more fear- 
fully than ever. The Mennonites continue to this day 
both in Holland and in America. 

But you will be much surprised to learn that most of 
the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century did not bap- 
tize; they were not immersionists. Apparently they 
generally practiced sprinkling or pouring, though im- 
mersion was practiced by those of St. Gall, Augsburg, 
Strassburg and by the Anti-Trinitarian Anabaptists of 
Poland. Even the noble Hubmeyer is said to have 
"baptized" three hundred out of a milk pail. "But 
then," you say, "they were not Baptists! 1 ' O yes they 
were, — in every principle except this, but of course 
inconsistent. For immersion alone does not by any 
means make a Baptist, although of course, it is necessary 
to make a complete one. We forget that immersion 
is not and never was, the fundamental article of our 
faith, but only a necessary deduction from our funda- 
mental principle. It is one of the two things that is 
most prominent in the minds of other people when they 
think of us, but let us not be ourselves beguiled into 
thinking that all the difference between us and other 
christians is that we immerse and they sprinkle. The 
real difference lies far deeper than this. The truth in 
regard to immersion is that for twelve centuries it was 



64 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

the universal practice, by Roman Catholics, the Greek 
Church, dissenters of every kind, and by the British 
and Irish churches. Then there is a gap of three hun- 
dred years or more when it was largely supplanted by 
sprinkling and pouring, until it was again revived by 
the English and Dutch Baptists and has continued to 
the present time. The Greek church has never practiced 
anything else and does not to-day. The great conten- 
tion of these Anabaptists was for a converted churcJi, 
and that has been the contention of Baptists always; 
that baptism and church membership were and are only 
for personal believers in Christ. This, rather than the 
necessity of immersion, is and always has been the con- 
trolling idea of a Baptist church, and this has separated 
them from all others. Their opposition and protest 
was against a church which included both godly and 
godless, ministered to by priests who were extortionate 
and unchaste, a church controlled by princes that were 
often wicked and immoral, knowing nothing of Christ, 
a church that only robbed the people and left them to 
go down to perdition in their ignorance of gospel truth; 
and it seems not to have occurred to them with any force 
that they themselves were violating scripture in a very 
important particular. The controversy of their day was 
not on this point and it was not until later that the 
inconsistency was seen, although it seems strange that 
it was not seen from the first. 

It is not too much to say that this fundamental idea 
of a converted church, which had persisted through all 
these centuries, kept alive by the various influences 
mentioned, was what made the Reformation possible. 



THE HISTORICAL LINE. 65 

These were they that preached the real gospel and the 
contrast of their pure lives and doctrine made the Papacy 
more odious than ever and prepared the people to turn 
from it. Indeed, as the learned Dr. Kellar says, the 
Anabaptist movement was tlie real Reformatio?! move- 
ment. It was the truest gospel movement of the age, 
(notwithstanding it developed, in some of its aspects, 
into fanaticism), not simply lopping off some of the 
abuses of a corrupt church and leaving the seeds of 
corruption still in their vigor to produce another like 
harvest, but bringing the people back to a pure New 
Testament Christianity as Christ and his Apostles taught 
it. If they could have had their way the modern religious 
history of Europe would have been entirely changed, 
and it would not have lapsed into that kind of a false 
and dead Christianity which it is today, the hot-bed of 
rationalism and infidelity, and needing missionaries of 
the gospel for its conversion as well as any heathen land. 
Europe is, religiously, four hundred years behind what 
it would have been but for the extermination of this 
people. But the fear and jealousy and even hatred of 
Catholic and Lutheran alike followed them until their 
leaders were slain and their organizations annihilated, 
and Baptist history disappears from Germany and 
Southern Europe until the appearance of Dr. Oncken 
in 1834. Baptists in Germany now number about 
twenty-eight thousand. 

So the line runs from Germany to Holland, and now 
from Holland to England and from England to America. 
The exact connection of English with Dutch Baptists 
is not clear. Certain it is that early in the sixteenth 



66 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

century some Dutch Baptists fled to England, but only 
to meet the same sorrows from which they had fled. 
Some of the first English Baptists also sent to Holland 
for their baptism, as no immersed person was found 
among them. There are evidences of many migrations 
of German and Dutch Baptists into England even as 
early as 1160 and from that onwards. Orchard says 
that there was a Baptist church at Chesterton in 1457, 
and gives his reasons for believing that such churches 
had existed there from the time of William the Con- 
querer. But however they originated, their history 
becomes clear about 1612 when the first modern Bap- 
tist church was formed in London. In 1626 this had 
increased to eleven churches, and in 1644, to forty-seven. 
The Welsh Baptists in connection with Vavasor Powell 
were reckoned in 1654 at twenty thousand.* Their con- 
fession of faith in 1660 is said to have been approved 
by more than twenty thousand. Indeed, before this 
time their influence had become so marked and the 
opposition to infant baptism so strong that not only 
were many treatises published against it and rational 
arguments used by godly men, but it was openly 
caricatured by the ungodly, so that cats and colts were 
derisively christened in ridicule of it. f Their number 
in England is now about two hundred and thirty-one 
thousand, and in all of Great Britain about three hun- 
dred and seventy-five thousand. Their history there 
was a long struggle for toleration, (for England has not 
yet secured full religious liberty, but only toleration,) 
which was refused them first by the Episcopal body and 

♦Orchard, Hist. Eng. Bap. p 284. fOrchard, p 272. 



THE HISTOEICAL LINE. 67 

then by the Presbyterian, until the Act of Toleration 
in 1689, since which time active persecution in England 
has ceased. 

But Baptists have had their fullest and freest devel- 
opment in "the land of the free" and this development 
is enough familiar to us so that I do not need to trace 
it. The first church organized by them in this country 
and still existing was formed in Providence, Bhode 
Island, in 1639, (though Newport claims that the 
present Providence church is not the original church 
and that the Newport branch of it is, and is therefore 
the oldest,) and the growth has been rapid. In 1700 
they had but twelve churches in the American colonies. 
In 1804 Backus estimated them as having twelve hun- 
dred churches and one hundred thousand members. In 
1812 they numbered one hundred and seventy-three 
thousand, in 1873 they had grown to one and a half 
millions, and in 1899 they number four millions, one 
hundred and forty-two thousand, and if we include those 
bodies that are really Baptist though not given in our 
own reports, they number four millions, three hundred 
and seventy thousand in the United States, not includ- 
ing a hundred and twenty-four thousand "Christians" 
and a million and eighty-five thousand "Disciples." 

The period of struggle, as far as this country is con- 
cerned, is past and our position is one of respectability 
and power. The directly evangelistic character of our 
work gives promise of still more rapid growth, and the 
prominence given to christian education will lead to a 
still more stable church and a more powerful influence 
on others. The net increase this year (1899) over last 



68 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

in the United States is eighty-six thousand, one hundred 
and eighty-nine. 

Our statistics are never complete because we have no 
way of requiring official reports, as in other bodies, and 
the various clerks never do their whole duty; but as 
nearly as the facts can be ascertained they are given in 
our Year Book, (though certainly not up to the actual 
totals,) and are as follows for the beginning of the year 
1899: 

Number of Baptists in the United States, . 4,141,995 

in the rest of N. America, 143,098 

" in South America, . . 1,389 

in Europe, 478,268 

in Asia, 119,745 

in Africa, 6,700 

" . " in Australasia, . . . 19,261 



Making a grand total of 4,910,456 

The total net gain over last year being . . 131,332 

To these figures ought properly to be added those of 
such bodies as the Free Baptists, the Dunkards, the 
Seventh Day Baptists, (notthe Seventh Day Adventists,) 
the Stundists, etc., of whose numbers we have no 
account, for they are also Baptists as judged by the 
broad definition we have given. 

We are therefore, in fellowship with a grand com- 
pany both present and past. Our brethren have not 
been, for the most part, famous in the world, not 
princes nor millionaires, but they have been true and 
they have been known of God and blessed. To such 



THE HISTORICAL LINE. 69 

prosperity and strength as this have we grown and our 
principles have been accepted far and wide. Let us 
remember that the days of prosperity are the days of 
danger, and let us fear lest liberty and prosperity shall 
do for us what the dungeon and the stake were not able 
to do, — turn us from a faithful witnessing for God, and 
a steadfast and unworldly life. "Let us hold fast the 
confession of our hope that it waver not; . . . and let us 
consider one another to provoke unto love and good 
works." 



"dnd others were tortured, not accepting their 
deliverance ; that they might obtain a better resur- 
rection: and others had trial of mockings and 
scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprison- 
ment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, 
they were tempted, they were slain with the sword: 
they went about in sheepskins, in goat skins; being 
destitute, afflicted, evil entreated, {of whom the 
world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and 
mountains and caves, and the holes of the earth. 
$Lnd these all, having had witness borne to them 
through their faith, received not the promise, God 
having provided some better thing concerning us, 
that apart from us they should not be made per- 
fect" 



III. 

THE SUFFERINGS OF BAPTISTS, 



In considering this part of our subject we need to 
make a clear distinction between the sufferings of 
christians as christians and the sufferings of christians 
as Baptists: for persecution of christians by pagans 
and because they are christians is one thing, and per- 
secution of one sort of christians by another sort of 
christians and because they are of another sort, is quite 
another thing. The very early christians were Baptists 
as we have seen, and they suffered; but they suffered, 
not because they were Baptists and differed from other 
christians, but because they were christians and differed 
from Jew and pagan. What we are to consider is the 
sufferings that came upon our spiritual ancestors on 
account of those doctrines and practices which marked 
them as a distinct people among christians, and which 
form the substance of our faith today. 

It is evident that there would be no persecution 
among christians (or those who were called such) until 
the church had become powerful enough to control the 
secular power to a large degree, and unspiritual enough 
to be intolerant of those who might oppose its interests; 



PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 73 

and that did not come to pass until the rise of the 
Papacy and its establishment in temporal power so that 
princes and potentates would do its bidding. And 
again, there would be no persecution until a considera- 
ble body arose to call in question the doctrines or 
practices of this dominating body and refuse obedience 
to it. As long as no one protested against the perver- 
sion of baptism by administering it to unconscious 
babes, and the consequent ignoring of the fundamental 
doctrine of Christianity, that salvation is through a 
personal faith in Jesus Christ, no one would be burned 
alive for their protest. But the true gospel had practi- 
cally died out of continental Europe and it was not 
until the twelfth century that a people arose to protest 
and suffer. The main story of Baptist sufferings, then, 
begins with the twelfth century. 

But this was not the first of persecution for holding 
our principles, which began, indeed, very early. The 
Novatians, who arose in the latter half of the third 
century, were ana-baptists, for they re-baptized those 
who came to them, though for a somewhat different 
reason than those who were later called Anabaptists. 
They were separatists and considered that all ordinances 
of the body from which they had separated were null 
and void because the body itself was corrupt in life and 
lax in discipline. The Donatists, beginning in the 
fourth century, were also ana-baptists, and held much 
in common with us, as they refused to baptize children, 
re-baptized those who came to them from the Catholics, 
their churches were independent and they repudiated 
the union of church and state. Their questions: "What 



74 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

has the Emperor to do with the church?' 1 and "What 
have christians to do with kings, or what have bishops 
to do with a court?" sound very pertinent and refresh- 
ing even now. Their influence became so strong that 
Honorius and Theodosius, the emperors of the East 
and West, were prevailed upon to issue a decree in the 
year 413 that both persons who re-baptized and persons 
who were re-baptized should suffer death; and two years 
later the council of Mela in Numidia, with Augustine 
at its head, decreed "We will that whoever denies that 
children by baptism are freed from perdition and 
eternally saved, that they be accursed." Many martyr- 
doms and much suffering were the results of these 
measures.* The Donatists continued for more than four 
hundred years amid constant suffering. Their per- 
secution ended with their extinction and infant 
baptism was for centuries triumphant. 

But let it be fully understood that the persecution of 
Baptists was never for their immersion, (although 
individuals have often been harassed for that in modern 
times) but for their insistence upon a converted cTiurcli 
membership and for their denial of infant baptism, 
which two things are practically one. That that was a 
church of Christ which was composed of unregenerated 
and unspiritual persons, and that one could be made a 
christian by the sprinkling of water with due ceremo- 
nial form even in unconscious infancy, is what Baptists 

*In the space of fifteen years Theodosius promulgated at least fifteen 
severe edicts against heretics. Heretical teachers were exposed to exile 
and confiscation. Religious meetings, by day or night, in cities or in the 
country, were proscribed, and the building or ground where the assem- 
bly was held was forfeited. "The office of Inquisitor of the Faith, a name 
so deservedly abhorred, was first instituted under the reign of Theodo- 
sius." Dutch Martyrology II, p. 187, note. London, 1853. 



PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 75 

have always and everywhere denied. And that is just 
what was believed in those days and is believed by 
multitudes still — that baptism made their babies 
christians — and believing it they, of course, had them 
"baptized." It is hard for us now to realize that any- 
body ever really believed that simply the performance 
of such a ceremony could save a child, without choice 
or faith or any action whatever on the part of the child, 
but they actually did, and believing it, consistently 
"baptized" their children. And that is the only possi- 
ble ground or justification of infant baptism. If you 
believe that baptism will save your child of course you 
will have it baptized; but if you do not, there is no 
reasonable reason to be given why you should do so. 
They, therefore, practiced infant baptism consistently 
but many of those who now practice it do so inconsis- 
ently, for they deny the doctrine of baptismal regener- 
ation while they continue the practice which originated 
from and has its only justification in that doctrine. 
As the German woman said to the amazed Congrega- 
tional minister who asked her if she really thought he 
could regenerate her babies and give them a title to 
eternal life by merely putting a little water on their 
heads, "To pe sure you can; and if you can't, vot's de 
good of it?" Who can answer her question? 

Nobody ever quarreled with us on account of our 
immersion or denied its validity, except that quite 
recently a few have been driven by stress of argument 
to deny that it is scriptural at all. The evidence is 
abundant that for thirteen hundred years immersion 
was universally practiced and that any other form of 



76 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

baptism, if admitted at all, was admitted only as excep- 
tional, and valid only in cases where immersion could 
not be performed. There was never any dispute about 
this. There was a dispute for a thousand years as to 
whether the candidate should be dipped three times or 
only once, but there was never any dispute as to 
whether he should be dipped at all. It was the apostolic 
baptism, as is now admitted by candid scholars of every 
belief, and no man with any reputation for learning 
would wish to risk his reputation as a scholar by a 
published statement to the contrary. If one of the 
pillars of that old first church in Jerusalem could 
appear on earth to-day, and happen in to the services 
of one of these paedobaptist churches in time to see an 
infant "baptized" or an adult sprinkled, he would not 
in the least comprehend the ceremony nor understand 
what it meant, for in all his life he never saw anything 
like it. It certainly never would enter his mind that 
it was meant for a baptism. It was clearly the baptism 
of the early churches succeeding the apostolic times. 
It was the baptism of the British and Irish churches. 
It was the baptism of the Eastern or Greek church, 
and still is, and it always seemed to me that those 
Greeks ought to be able to understand their own lan- 
guage in which the Apostles wrote. They "baptize" 
infants, but they always immerse them.* It was also 
the baptism of the Western church. Clovis, king of 
the Franks, was immersed with three thousand of his 
warriors in the year 476, and the font or baptistery in 

*A very interesting description of a Greek baptism is given in the 
Baptist Quarterly Review, 1870, p 80. 






PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 77 

which tradition says it was done is still to be seen in 
Paris. On Easter day in the year 627 bishop Paulinus 
immersed three thousand Northumbrians in a pool 
about two miles from Harbottle, England, and a monu- 
ment in the shape of a cross stands in the middle of 
the pool, bearing an inscription which declares that 
fact. The pool is about twenty-four by twenty feet in size 
and two feet deep at present, and by closing the outlet 
could be made much deeper. Mosaics and paintings from 
the fourth century to the thirteenth set forth baptism as 
an immersion. Venerable Bede the historian, who died 
about the year 735, after describing various immersions 
and baptisteries, says: "For he truly who is baptized 
is seen to descend into the fountain; he is seen to be 
dipped in the waters; he is seen to ascend from the 
waters." Cardinal Pulis, who lectured at both Oxford 
and Paris, and was a very learned man, writes in the 
year 1150: "Whilst the candidate for baptism in water 
is immersed, the death of Christ is suggested; whilst 
immersed and covered with water, the burial of Christ 
is shown forth; whilst he is raised from the waters, the 
resurrection of Christ is proclaimed. The immersion 
is repeated three times." 

There was no definite time when the change from 
immersion to sprinkling can be said to have been made, 
or the practice of sprinkling to have originated. Pour- 
ing can be traced to a definite beginning but sprinkling 
can not; like Topsy, it "jest growed." We find the 
Council of London in the year 1200 enjoining immersion . 
That of Sarum in 1217 and that of Oxford in 1222 did 
the same. In 1240 the SyQod of Worcester decreed; 



78 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

"In every church where baptism is performed there 
shall be a font of stone of sufficient size and depth for 
the baptism of children, and let the candidate for 
baptism be always immersed." These decrees might 
seem to show that an innovation upon the ancient 
method had already begun. In 1311 the council at 
Ravenna permits sprinkling as exceptional, and 
before this it had no formal sanction. Immersion 
continued the rule in England until after 1450. The 
catechism of 1604 makes sprinkling valid, and within a 
hundred years from that date that which had been the 
exception became the rule and the ancient immersion 
was superseded. 

Dean Stanley says in his famous essay on baptism: 
"In the Church of England, immersion is still observed 
in theory. The rubric in the public baptism for infants 
enjoins that unless for special causes they are to be 
dipped, not sprinkled. Edward the Sixth and Elizabeth 
were both immersed. But since the beginning of the 
seventeenth century the practice has become exceed- 
ingly rare." 

Even as late as August 7th, 1664, the noted West- 
minster Assembly, which framed the great confession 
of faith known as the Westminster Confession, fell 
into a "great heat" over the question of immersion. 
The matter is worth giving in the quaint language of 
Dr. Lightfoot, who kept a journal of the proceedings. 
"Then fell we upon the work of the day, which was 
about the baptism of the child, whether to dip or 
sprinkle him; and this proposition, "It is lawful and 
sufficient to besprinkle the child," had been canvassed 



PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 79 

before our adjournment and was ready now to vote. 
But I spoke against it as being very unfit to vote that 
it is lawful to sprinkle when everyone grants it. 
Whereupon it was fallen upon, sprinkling being 
granted, whether dipping should be tolerated with it. 
And here fell we upon a large and long discourse 
whether dipping were essential or used in the first in- 
stitution or in the Jews' custom . . . After a long dispute 
it was at last put to the question whether the Directory 
should run, "The minister shall take water and sprinkle 
or pour it with his hand upon the face or forehead of 
the child;" and it was voted so indifferently that we 
were glad to count names twice; for so many were 
unwilling to have dipping excluded that the vote came 
to an equality within one; for the one side was twenty- 
four, the other twenty-five, — the twenty-four for the 
reserving of dipping and the twenty-five against it. 
And then grew a great heat upon it; and when we had 
done all we concluded upon nothing in it, but the 
business was recommitted." The next day it was voted 
that the Directory should read, "He is to baptize the 
child with water, which, for the manner of doing it, is 
no't only lawful but also sufficient and most expedient 
to be by pouring or sprinkling water upon the face of 
the child without any other ceremony." Note in this 
account that immersion was not excluded but sprink- 
ling was permitted; and note, also, the narrow majority 
by which it was carried on the first vote. 

The following from the dairy of John Wesley, written 
in Savannah, Georgia, ought to be of interest, at least 
to our Methodist brethren, "Saturday, 21st, February, 



80 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

(1736). Mary Welch, aged eleven days, was baptized 
according to the custom of the first church and the rule 
of the church of England, by immersion. The child 
was ill then but recovered from that hour." And 
again, "Wednesday, May 5th. I was asked to baptize 
a child of Mr. Parker, second bailiff of Savannah. But 
Mrs. Parker told me, "Neither Mr. Parker nor I will 
consent to its being dipped." I answered, "If you will 
certify that your child is weak it will suffice, the rubric 
says, to pour water upon it." She replied, "Nay, the 
child is not weak but I am resolved it shall not be 
dipped." This argument I could not confute. So I 
went home and the child was baptized by another per- 
son." 

I could easily spend the whole hour in reading you 
testimonies gathered from various writers living in 
different countries and all the way down from the first 
century to the thirteenth, showing that during all this 
time immersion was the universal practice throughout 
all Christendom, but will add on]y the following words 
of Dean Stanley who sums up the whole matter thus: — 
"For the first thirteen centuries the almost universal 
practice of baptism was that of which we read in the 
New Testament, and such is the very meaning of the 
word "baptize" that those who were baptized were 
plunged, submerged, immersed into water." He adds, 
"Baptism by sprinkling was rejected by the whole 
ancient church (except in the rare case of death-beds 
or extreme necessity) as no baptism at all." 

Nobody, therefore, ever had any quarrel with us on 
account^bf our immersion. The creat matter of con- 



PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 81 

troversy was first as to the subjects of baptism, and 
later, both as to subjects and form. The whole horrid 
history of Baptist persecutions has been on account of 
infant baptism. We can hardly comprehend what an 
awful hold the idea that infant baptism saves the child 
has had on Christendom, so that for centuries all 
Christendom iived and died in the full and complacent 
belief of it. R was not strange, then, that men were 
thrown into consternation when this foundation stone 
of salvation was threatened with removal, nor that their 
wrath was stirred against those w T ho denied the reality 
of that salvation in which they so implicitly believed. 
To save that "beautiful" and "impressive rite," that 
"triumph of christian charity" as some call it; to save 
that masterpiece of Satan's ingenuity, as it really is; by 
which more has been done to block the progress of the 
kingdom of God than by any other thing that ever was; 
by which more corruption has been brought into the 
christian church; by which more people have been put 
beyond the reach of converting influences than by any 
other; by which untold millions of imregenerated, un- 
saved sinners have been made to go down to perdition 
in the full belief that they were christians and heirs of 
eternal life; — to save this, fires have been kindled, racks 
have been stretched, swords have been sharpened, and 
oceans of innocent blood have been shed. Rightly does 
the Presbyterian Dr. John Robertson of Glasgow call 
it "a sinful addition to and reversal of the Word of 
God," a "traditional lie," a "devil's delusion." He says, 
"You may like it or dislike it, baby sprinkling, as a 
simple addendum to the Word of God, and as such 



82 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

inheriting the curse in the 19th verse of the 23rd Rev- 
elation on all such human or diabolical addenda, is an 
infernal lie. By this devil's door of baby-sprinkling 
the great heresy of the church, the ex opere operato 
delusion, the Roman and the Anglican semi-Roman 
error of errors, baptismal regeneration, stalked in to 
tread its grim march of death over the graves of the 
multitudes of souls it has slain and damned forever!' 1 
This is from a sermon preached in his own church, the 
City Temple Presbyterian Church of Glasgow, to a 
congregation of four thousand people. The whole ser- 
mon is very interesting reading and I heartily commend 
it to our Presbyterian brethren. If a Baptist should 
use such language as this there would be an uproar, but 
when a Presbyterian says it perhaps we may be permit- 
ted to say "Amen." 

Infant baptism means baptismal regeneration; it 
means sacramental efficacy, that is, salvation by the 
magical influence of rites and ceremonies instead of by 
personal faith; it means the perversion of the scriptures 
and the setting up*of man's authority above Christ's; it 
means an unconverted church; it means spiritual things 
administered by unspiritual men; it means the church 
a human institution and run on human principles; and 
this is shown by actual experience as well as by logical 
deduction. Against this Baptists have always protested, 
and for their protest have been hated and imprisoned 
and tortured and murdered. Let me repeat it again; — 
the great reason for the persecution of Baptists in times 
past and the hostility shown them in time present is 
and has always been their rejection of infant baptism. 



PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 83 

This is shown in many ways; by the charges of their 
opponents, by the topics in disputations held and 
by the question always and everywhere asked, if they 
believed infants should be baptized or could be saved 
without baptism, and especially in the language of the 
decrees by which they were condemned. The phrase 
constantly recurring in the decrees of their condemna- 
tion is "because he held that the baptism of infants did 
not profit," or "that the baptism of infants is unlawful," 
and "for the error of ana-baptism," i. e. re-baptism, and 
"for re-baptizing." But why condemn for r^-baptizing? 
What harm in two baptisms? Evidently this, that a 
re-baptism is a declaration that the former baptism was 
not valid. There is no other reason for a second one, 
and this reason is clearly stated in some of their 
decrees. It is the same thing that compels a Metho- 
dist or Congregational pastor of to-day to refuse to 
immerse one who is dissatisfied with his infant or other 
sprinkling, (and their name is legion). For him to do 
so would be to contradict his own teaching, admit the 
invalidity of his own practices and endorse the position 
of the Baptist. In the last Methodist General Confer- 
ence the statement was made that they are losing to the 
Baptists more than five thousand members every year 
on account of dissatisfaction with their baptism received 
in infancy, or sprinkling received in later years, and to 
remedy this it was proposed to allow their ministers to 
immerse those whose consciences were thus troubled. 
But the proposition was wisely smothered, for that 
would have been a practical concession of our whole 
contention as to this subject. 



84 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

This denial of infant baptism and not peculiarities in 
regard to the "communion" is the real ground of oppo- 
sition to Baptists today. This is why we are by some 
actually hated, by others shunned, and by many more 
regarded with suspicion. But to make so called "close 
communion" the ground of opposition is an entire mis- 
take. So are the Presbyterians "close communionists," 
for they will not "commune" with the nnbaptized, and 
there are more than a hundred and fifteen thousand of 
them in this country who will not even "commune" with 
other Presbyterians.* So are the Episcopalians "close 
communionists" for the same reason. So are the Luth- 
erans and so at least in theory, is every other church.f 
None of these, except as moved by the loose modern 
liberalism, will "commune" with the unbaptized. No, 
it is not that they are shut out from our christian 
fellowship, for they have it in airpractical ways and 
have it heartily. It is not that they desire with us 
to commemorate the Lord's sufferings and are grieved 
because they cannot. They do not mingle largely with 
each other in this observance, and if we should throw 
down all bars and freely invite them in they would not 
come after the novelty had worn off. They want their 
baptism endorsed, and that is the whole controversy. 
The only ground on which we refuse to sit at the Lord's 
table with them is their lack of christian baptism, and 
our practice continually says to them, "You are not 
baptized, you are not baptized, you are not baptized," 
and that is the whole offense. 

But further; infant baptism itself is of the nature of 

*The United Presbyterians and the Reformed (Covenanter) Presby- 
terians. fExcept, perhaps, the "Disciples." 



PEESECUTIONS AND SUFFEKINGS. 85 

persecution. It is the performance of a very impor- 
tant religious act for the individual without his knowl- 
edge or consent, depriving him of the privilege of 
conscious obedience in the matter. It is doing for him 
a thing of which his own conscience may not afterwards 
approve, and when in mature years he wishes to be 
baptized, the privilege is denied him on the ground that 
he has been baptized. It thus denies the right of 
individual choice, which is the very essence and 
underlying principle of persecution. An incident in 
my own pastorate a few years ago will illustrate this. 
A very lovely young christian woman of my congrega- 
tion, who had longed for the privilege of following 
Christ in baptism but had been hindered by opposing 
parents and relatives, was dying of quick consumption 
and was already too weak to argue any matter or even 
to converse. She was visited by the Rector of her 
mother's church, who took her severely to task for 
wishing to leave the bosom of "The Church" and 
ridiculed the people of her choice unsparingly. He 
told her that she had no right to unite with a Baptist 
church, (she was of full age,) that she belonged to them 
by reason of her infant baptism and training and that 
nothing she could do would change that relation, and 
that even if she should unite with another church 
such action would be null and void, and much more of 
the same sort. Had she been strong enough she would 
have given him some information that would have done 
him good, but under the circumstances it was an outrage. 
Here was an explicit denial of her right of choice or the 
exercise of her own conscience concerning her christian 



86 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

duty, on the ground that it had all been settled for her 
before she was old enough to know anything about it. 
He needed but one thing more to make it full fledged 
persecution, and that was the power to tell her "And if 
you do go into that church we will burn you for it." 

And furthermore, the only body that has persistently 
repudiated infant baptism is the only body that has 
never persecuted any one or advocated principles that 
lead to persecution; — except, of course, those who 
repudiate all external ordinances, as the Quakers and 
some heretical sects, and except also those churches 
whose origin was since the days of gross persecution 
passed away. Baptists have never anywhere persecuted 
others nor sought or accepted such an alliance with the 
secular power as would have made such persecution 
possible. This statement has seemed to some like 
vaunting ourselves above others and has been denied, 
but consider the following facts: — 

1. Their fundamental doctrine of personal faith and 
personal responsibility; that religion is a matter between 
the individual soul and God alone, and that for the 
performance of any and every religious duty whatever 
the individual is responsible only to God. This is 
the doctrine of soul liberty; that inasmuch as the 
soul is responsible directly and only to God, no man 
has any right either to force or forbid any one as to any 
matter of religious belief or practice. That doctrine 
made it impossible for them to persecute. 

2. The wide spread doctrine, held for centuries by 
them, that a christian ought not to bear the sword, that 
is, be a magistrate; without which of course there could 



PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 87 

be no compulsion of others. This teaching was clearly 
a mistake, for if any man should be a christian and act 
in the fear of God, surely he should whose duty it is to 
rule and to judge. It was a christian doctrine as they 
meant it, but it seemed to their enemies to be dangerous 
socialism and it added much to their sufferings. 

3. The first government ever formed by Baptists 
and on Baptist principles specifically forbade any 
interference by any one with the conscience of another, 
and decreed that "No person within the said colony, at 
any time hereafter, shall be in any w r ise molested, 
punished, disquieted or called in question for any differ- 
ence of opinion in matters of religion." I shall refer 
to this again. 

If the matter is still disputed however, I demand an 
instance, and challenge any one to show where and when 
Baptists have persecuted in any wise. Dr. J. L. M. 
Curry truly says, "No Baptist church can be found [in 
history J which has ever favored an alliance with govern- 
ment, and no Baptist author can be adduced who has 
advocated the use of civil authority to control or regu- 
late religious belief."* One single Baptist church has 
been found however, the South Brimfield church in 
Massachusetts, which did for a single year accept money 
raised by taxation for the support of their pastor. They 
had been persuaded to this by some dissatisfied Congre- 
gational brethren, but they saw their mistake, unani- 
mously voted to publish a confession of it, asked 
forgiveness of God and their brethren, and, let us hope, 
were forgiven. f 

♦Struggles and Triumphs of Virginia Baptists, p. 25. 
fLife and Times of Isaac Backus, p. 277, 



88 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

"But" you say, "they never had a chance; they never 
had control." Yes, but they have. They had control 
in Rhode Island and they made religion abso- 
lutely free. They had opportunity when offered 
state support and adoption as the state church in 
Holland in 1819, and refused it. They had opportunity 
in Georgia in 1785 when the legislature voted a state 
tax for the support of churches, and they secured the 
repeal of the measure. They were in the majority in a 
large part of the state and would have received much 
money by it, but they opposed it unanimously. They 
have control in some of the states of the Union today 
but there is no disposition to take advantage of it. 
Those who insist that every applicant shall give evidence 
of the possession of the spirit of Christ before admission 
to the church at all are not the ones to violate that spirit 
by the persecution of their fellow christians. The great 
heresy of the ages and the prolific root of every sort of 
cruelty has been infant baptism. 

The days of persecution seem like the memory of 
some frightful dream. What a nightmare of horrors 
history has been! It seems almost incredible that a 
time could ever have been when such things were 
possible, and we are almost persuaded that their story 
is the product of some one's diseased imagination. It 
seems incredible that at least three millions of christians 
should have been murdered for their faith before the 
year 312, yet that estimate has been made and it seems 
not improbable, and certainly more than that number 
have been murdered for their faith since that time. We 
were exceedingly shocked by the horrors of Bulgaria in 






PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 89 

1876 and of Armenia in 1896, and the cold chills ran 
over us as we read the description by an eye-witness of 
a ghastly pile of three hundred human bodies thrown 
together by "the unspeakable Turk;" but what shall we 
say when sober historians tell us of thirty thousand 
Waldensians butchered for their faith and thrown into 
a single heap at the instigation of the "Holy Catholic 
Church," of sixty thousand murdered in that single 
campaign, of two hundred thousand destroyed in a few 
months, and this followed by other and still other 
butcheries until the heart grows sick and the head faint 
at the recital! 

What Baptists have suffered is too sickening to read 
and too horrible to tell: in Germany, in Switzerland, in 
Holland, in Moravia, in Austria, in Italy, in France, in 
England. Even in America they suffered; in Massa- 
chusetts, in Connecticut, in Virginia, in New York, in 
South Carolina, and so lately that those now living have 
heard their fathers and grandfathers tell the story. It 
does not appear however, that any Baptist suffered 
death for his faith in America except indirectly as the 
result of imprisonment etc., although four Quakers were 
hung in Boston, two in 1659, one in 1660 and one in 
1661, for the crime of being Quakers. The story of 
these sufferings can not now be given in detail for that 
would require many volumes to be written, and we can 
only gather up some samples and indications of the 
whole. 

To get some idea of the awf ulness of the persecutions 
of Baptists, consider how wfide spread and numerous 
they were and then remember that except in Holland, 



90 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

they were utterly exterminated. In the year 1530 there 
was scarcely a village in the Netherlands where they 
were not found, and in many localities they were the 
leading influence. In Friesland one out of every four 
was a Baptist, and they are not more numerous in any 
place in the world today. The state of Georgia gives 
us the same proportion, one out of four. As to Ger- 
many, Dr. Kellar, the archivist of Munster, who probably 
knows more about the Anabaptists than any other living 
man, says; "The more I examine the documents at my 
command the more I am astonished at the extent of the 
diffusion of Anabaptist views; an extent no other 
investigator has any knowledge of. 1 ' He speaks of 
their churches in city after city and province after 
province all over the German empire and from the 
North Sea to the Alps. They must have been numbered 
by the hundreds of thousands, and yet they were 
exterminated. So numerous were they that in many 
places Catholic and Lutheran priests could find no 
occupation, and they complain that their churches are 
deserted, their teachings held in contempt, and the 
infants withheld from baptism; although they may 
possibly have exaggerated their grievances. 

In Moravia there were estimated to be seventy thous- 
and Baptists, which would make them about as numerous 
as in Massachusetts at the present time. They must 
have been more numerous in many provinces than they 
now are in most of the United States, for, taking the 
whole Union together, Baptists number about one in 
seventeen of the population. In Minnesota they number 
only one in eighty-four; in Wisconsin, one in seventy- 



PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 91 

four; in Michigan, one in thirty-eight; in New York, 
one in thirty- four; and so on down to Virginia with its 
three hundred and thirty-three thousand Baptists, or 
one in four and two-thirds, and Georgia with its three 
hundred and seventy-seven thousand, or one in four. 
Consider what a task it would be to exterminate the 
Baptists of even a single state of the Union, and yet all 
those hosts of central Europe were utterly annihilated. 
They were systematically hunted out, as men hunt 
wolves, with the set purpose of their complete extinction, 
and that extinction was accomplished, so that for nearly 
two hundred years not a Baptist was known in the 
greater part of Europe. 

For generation after generation it was as much a 
crime to be a Baptist as to be a murderer. Nay, more 
a crime; for there was often mercy for the murderer or 
the lecherous villain, but for the Baptist, none. They 
had no protection for life or property. It was a crime 
for them to meet and pray together; a crime to preach 
the gospel; a crime to instruct any one in the way of 
life; a crime even to believe the teachings of Jesus. It 
was a crime to deny any of the monstrous teachings of 
the Roman Catholic church or the less mistaken teach- 
ings of the Reformed churches. It was a crime to teach 
any one of those truths which we hold most precious, 
and above ail was it a crime to do that which is the 
most precious privilege of a Baptist minister, baptize a 
believing convert. 

For these things they were beheaded, they were 
drowned, they were sent to the galleys, they were burned 
alive, they were buried alive, yes, some were actually 



92 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

boiled alive! Not to speak of the slow torture of death 
by starvation and in foul prisons where they died in a 
manner worthy of Libby prison or Andersonville. Says 
the chronicler, speaking of Moravia; "Some were torn 
to pieces on the rack; some were burned to ashes and 
powder; some were roasted on pillars; some were torn 
with red hot tongs; some were shut up in houses and 
burned in masses; some were hanged on trees; some 
were executed with the sword; some were plunged into 
the water; many had gags put into their mouths so that 
they could not speak and so were led away to death. 
Like sheep and lambs, crowds of them were led away to 
be butchered and slaughtered. Others were starved or 
allowed to rot in noisome prisons. Many had holes 
burned in their backs and were left in this condition. 
Like owls and bitterns they dared not go abroad by day 
but lived and crouched in rocks and caverns, in wild for- 
ests, in caves and pits. Many were hunted down with 
hounds and catchpoles," and so the horrid recital goes on. 
In Switzerland they were often tied at intervals to a long 
rope made fast to the neck, and then made to stand 
together upon some overhanging rock or platform, so 
that when the foremost was pushed off into the water, 
each in falling would drag the next one after him, and 
so all would drown together both men and women. 

They were systematically robbed of all they had for 
the benefit of their persecutors. Their wills and con- 
tracts were rendered void and their business ruined. 
They were driven from their homes in winter to freeze 
to death or to starve. Men were imprisoned for shelter- 
ing them, for giving them food, or even for failing to 



PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 93 

report them. Men were tortured to make them tell if 
they knew where any poor Baptist was in hiding. The 
infamous edict of the Zwinglian authorities at Zurich 
in 1530 and the still more infamous edict of Charles V 
in 1535 not only decreed death to the Anabaptist with- 
out mercy, but severe punishments upon any who should 
fail or hesitate in their zeal in hunting them out. The 
even more atrocious edict of Philip II, who succeded 
Charles V in 1535, demands that the men be "punished 
with the sword; and the women by being buried alive, 
if they do not maintain or defend their errors. But in 
case they persist in their errors, opinions or heresies, 
they shall be executed by fire;" and declares that if any 
fail to make them known or shall harbor them in any 
way they shall "be punished with the same punishment 
as the heretic or criminal would be, if he were taken 
and imprisoned." Many engaged in the wicked work 
through fear for themselves, whose feelings of humanity 
would otherwise have kept them from it. Every form 
of meanest treachery was devised to trap them, and 
spies were even hired to profess conversion with hypo- 
critical tears, in order that they might be admitted to 
their secrets and so betray their hiding places to those 
who sought their lives. Their tongues were often 
bored or burned, or even cut out, in order that they 
might not be able to speak to the multitudes assembled 
at their execution and infect them with their heresy. 
Their leaders were not only butchered but tortured 
with a cruelty that would shame an American savage; 
— men with whom, for sweetness of spirit, for nobility 
of character and spiritual culture as well as scholarship 



'94 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

and learning, such a one as Luther, much as he is 
praised, is not to be compared. For example Jacob 
Huter, a godly man and a wondrously successful 
preacher of the gospel, was seized and gagged and led 
away to Innsbruck, where he was first thrown into cold 
water and then into hot water, his flesh was torn with 
red hot pincers and the wounds were filled with brandy, 
and then the brandy was set on fire, and in this 
awful torture he perished. Devils fresh from hell could 
not invent worse torments than these gentle representa- 
tives of a "holy" church, every one of whom had been 
"baptized" in his infancy and thereby had "become 
regenerate and grafted into the church of Jesus Christ." 
But the story is too horrible to tell. If I were simply to 
detail the list of horrors visited upon our poor Baptist 
brethren, the women of this audience would faint in 
their seats and the men would drive me from the plat- 
form. And all this, mind you, was done in the name of 
God and of his Christ and with the utmost sanctimon- 
iousness conceivable. Let me give you a sample decree 
taken from the records of the Inquisition in Switzer- 
land in 1430:— 

"In the name of God, Amen. We, Br. Ulrich of 
Torrente of the Dominican order of Lausanne, and with 
full Apostolic authority Inquisitor of heretical iniquity 
in the diocese of Lausanne; and John de Columpnis, 
Licentiate and specially appointed to this work by the 
venerable father in Christ, Lord William of Challant, 
Bishop of Lausanne, have directed by the pure process 
of the Inquisition that you, Peter Sager, now 60 years 
old, born at Montrich, thirty years and more ago fore- 



PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 95 

swore the Waldensian heresy in the city of Berne, but 
since that tinie have returned to that preyerse faith like 
a dog to his vomit and held and done many things 
detestable and vile against the most holy and venerable 
Roman church. You have stubbornly asserted that 
there is no purgatory but only heaven and hell; 
that masses and intercessions and alms for the souls 
of the departed are of no avail; and there are many 
other things proven against you in your trial that show 
that you have fallen back into heresy. O grief! 
Therefore after consideration and investigation and 
mature consideration and weighing of evidence; and 
after consulting the statutes both of human and divine 
law and arming ourselves with the revered sign of the 
Holy Cross, we declare; In the name of the Father, Son 
and Holy Ghost, Amen; that our decision may proceed 
from the presence of God and our eyes behold justice, 
turning neither to the right nor left but fixed on God 
and the holy scriptures, we make known as our final 
sentence that you Peter Sager are and have been a 
heretic, treacherously recreant to your oath of recanta- 
tion. As a relapsed heretic we commit you to the arm 
of the secular power. However we entreat the secular 
authorities to execute the sentence of death more mildly 
than the canonical statutes require, particularly as to 
the mutilation of the members of the body. We further 
decree that all and every property that belongs to you 
Peter, is confiscated and after being divided into three 
parts, the first part shall go to the government, the 
second to the officers of the Inquisition and the third to 
pay the expenses of the trial," 



96 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

And the following is found upon the town record as 
to the expenses of the execution: 

Paid to Master Garnaucie for burning Peter 

Sager, . ... 20 shillings. 

For cords and stake, .... 10 u 

For the pains of the executioner, . . .28 " 
Special watchman during the execution 

in the city, . . 17. shillings, 6 pfennings. 

Special watchmen in the citadel, . . 9 sols. 
For the beadles, ..... 14 shillings. 
And twelve wagon loads of fuel were used in the burn- 
ing.* This record speaks for itself; I cannot find 
language adequately to comment upon it. 

How many were thus put to death can never be told. 
There is much doubtless, yet to be revealed from the 
study of old records in Europe which w 7 ill make the his- 
tory more complete. In the small province of the Tyrol 
one thousand were put to death in four years. This is 
at the rate of two hundred and fifty per year in one little 
province, whereas, during the whole reign of her who is 
called "bloody Mary,' 1 and in all England, only tw T o 
hundred and sixty-four suffered death. Six hundred 
were slain at Ensisheim;six hundred at Brixen; seventy- 
three at Lintz; twenty at Rothenburg; sixty-eight at 
Katzbuhel; thirty-nine at Salzburg; seventy-two within 
five years at Antwerp; three hundred and fifty at Alzey, 
between a hundred and fifty and two hundred in the 
Palatinate, another small province, etc., etc. The records 
speak of thousands upon thousands all over Germany, 
Austria, Holland, Prussia, Switzerland and other coun- 

♦Armitage, Hist, of Bap., p. 312. 






PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 97 

tries. The official report of the Venetian embassador 
to the court of Charles V in 1546 says that "In Holland 
and Friesland more than thirty thousand persons have 
suffered death at the hands of justice for Anabaptist 
errors." This is the language of a-sRoman Catholic of 
course, and so he calls their martyrdom for repudiation 
of Papal abominations "suffering death at the hands of 
justice." Of the seventy thousand already mentioned 
in Moravia we can not tell how many were put to death 
and how many were driven out, but, ruined by foreign 
invasions, hunted by the Jesuits, they were pursued 
until there were none remaining. 

Catholics persecuted Lutherans and Lutherans per- 
secuted Catholics in turn, but both together wreaked 
their vengeance on the poor Baptists; and when at any 
lull in the tempest the hand of persecution was lifted 
and favors were granted to dissenting bodies, those 
who denied the validity of infant baptism were specific- 
ally excepted. 

How shall we explain this persistent persecution, 
especially when we know by many indications that they 
were a peaceable, pure, God-fearing people? So true 
was this that their very piety was a means of pointing 
them out to their persecutors. Was anyone observed 
at prayer? He was an Anabaptist. Did anyone offer 
thanks before eating? He must be an Anabaptist. 
Did he refuse to curse and swear and even to become 
angry? He was surely an Anabaptist. A letter written 
in these times says: — "If anyone will speak for God, 
for a christian life, against the ungodliness of the times, 
he must be regarded as a most wicked Anabaptist, and 



98 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

many think they cannot otherwise escape this brand 
than by frequent revellings. For to this pass has your 
evangelic freedom brought the world, that every one 
earnestly striving to reform their lives, who will not 
wallow with the drunken swine, that is, live unchastely, 
must be an Anabaptist."* 

The persecutions were due to several things, and 
chiefly to the fear that the existing order of things 
would be overturned by the new doctrines. As of old 
and ever, these chief priests and Pharisees feared the 
loss of their prestige and power and desired to continue 
their monopoly of religious prerogatives. But many 
doubtless were sincere in their alarm. Knowing nothing 
of the experience of a real spiritual regeneration, they 
believed the church in which they had been trained to 
be the only true church and to offer the only salvation, 
and it seemed to them that the church of God was 
being torn to pieces by these heretics. And again, the 
Anabaptist doctrine that a christian should not "bear 
the sword," that is, be a magistrate to rule and judge 
his brethren, seemed to them to be a wild and danger- 
ous socialism, subversive of all law and order. The 
Anabaptists looked upon the magistrates around them 
and saw only those who were cruel and unjust and 
used their power for oppression and persecution. 
Magistracy was to them synonomous with wickedness 
and oppression and they said, the christian ought not 
to be a magistrate; the christian should suffer wrong 
rather than do wrong. But to those who could not 
appreciate this truly Christ^like acceptance of the 

♦Quoted in Dollinger's Reformation, I. 65. 



PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 99 

gospel teaching, their position seemed like a denial of 
all properly constituted authority, and they looked upon 
them as anarchists and charged them with all the wild 
and wicked schemes with which we charge the anarch- 
ists of today. 

But all this does not by any means fully explain it. 
It does not explain the vindictive meanness of their 
treatment, the intentional and shameless exposure of 
women during torture or at their death, the tortures of 
the pincers and the rack before their execution, the 
mean vilification of them both living and dead, the 
calloused obtuseness to the force of their arguments 
and their uniform condemnation in spite of reason- 
ings, protests and denials; for there was never but one 
ending in their trials. They were hated, simply hated 
for their purity of life and for the necessary exposure 
by contrast of the false religious life and teaching of 
their persecutors. Their life and teaching was of 
necessity a continual condemnation of the false Christi- 
anity of Catholic and Lutheran and condemnation of 
self, whether just or not, is the last thing a man will 
submit to. If they were right others were wrong and 
their very existence as Baptists contained a logical 
force which was resented just as it is today. If they 
were simply regarded as dangerous people whose exter- 
mination was a necessity, why not kill them off as 
quickly and painlessly as possible, and so let them go 
without the abominable tortures which only hate could 
invent or permit ? No ! the circumstances of their taking 
off showed a vindictive hatred which was felt and voiced 
even by as good a man as Zwingli in that famous cold- 
ly <tf u. 



100 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

blooded sentence of his, more terse in the Latin than it 
can be made in English, "Qui iterum mergit, merga- 
tur;" "He who a second time immerses, let him be 
immersed," that is, drowned. 

There was not a Reformer of any prominence who did 
not stain his hands with the blood of his Baptist 
brethren; Luther, Melancthon, Zwingli, Bucer, Bullin- 
ger, Calvin, Knox, Cramner, Latimer, Ridley, and many 
others, who endorsed these cruelties and in the face of 
whose opposition they would not have been committed. 
Some of these in turn were burned at the stake them- 
selves, in the carrying out by the Romanists against 
them of the same line of argument which themselves 
employed against the Baptists. When defending them- 
selves they claimed the rights of conscience and denied 
the right of others to persecute, but w T hen opposing 
Baptists, urged the necessity of the extinction of heresy 
even by putting heretics to death. They could not see 
that they themselves were also heretics, and that others 
had just as good a right to differ from them as they had 
to differ from the Catholics. 

But this brief recital has given us only the merest 
scraps and hints of suffering. Fill out for yourself the 
particulars and consider how much suffering of every 
kind was involved; homes broken up and fathers mur- 
dered; the tears and fears of orphaned children left to 
the tender mercies of their enemies; the struggles of 
widowed mothers to find bread for their fatherless 
children; the hardships of families driven out from 
their homes and despoiled of all their possessions to 
find food among strangers or starve; and with all this 



PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 101 

the constant thought of the galling injustice of it all 
and of the ill will and contempt which they must bear, 
which was only the product of prejudice and supersti- 
tion and ignorance. The cool calculation of cruelty 
which they suffered was infamous. Communities were 
driven out just before the harvest time, when there 
would be no possible chance to raise another crop with 
which to feed themselves, and when the fruits of their 
year of toil would fall into the hands of their persecutors. 
Nor were they even suffered to depart voluntarily in 
peace though empty handed. Witness this instance 
among many: — "In a mountainous district of Switzer- 
land a numerous body of Baptists were visited by a 
friend from Moravia who persuaded them to migrate to 
his country, where means of living were more abundant 
and they would be beyond the reach of their persegutors. 
They disposed of their possessions and set forth upon 
their long journey. But in a strange land on the way 
their enemies overtook them. All the men were 
beheaded, the women drowned, their property and their 
little ones carried off."* They were even forbidden by 
Philip II to change their place of abode lest they should 
seek another habitation and so escape with their lives. 
What a world of pathos there is in the words of Menno 
Simon: "What misery and anxiety have I felt in the 
deadly perils of persecution for my poor sick wife and 
little children. While others lie on soft beds and 
cushions, we must often creep away into secret corners. 
While others engage in festivities to the music of the 
fife and of the trumpet, we must look around whenever 

♦Heroes and Hierarchs, p. 103. 



102 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

a dog barks, fearing the spies are on our track." What 
a revelation of heartache in these words of Bunyan: 
"The parting from my wife and poor children hath 
often been to me in this place as the pulling of my 
flesh off my bones . . . especially my poor blind child, 
who lay nearer my heart than all I had beside. I was 
as a man who was pulling down his house upon the 
head of his wife and children. Yet, thought I, I must 
do it, I must do it." Very truly and tersely says Dr. 
Bitting, "Through long centuries of anguish and conflict 
Baptists have toiled, at every tread detailing their 
martyrs to dungeon and to death, and faltering not 
until victory dawned. With a welcome to every living 
soul to share the sweet results of their conflicts, they 
returned to build their waste places and to enlarge their 
borders, only to find their deeds denied or forgotten, 
their history calumniated, their very name a target for 
reproach and they only called bigots."* 

In England and America the story is less awful; yet 
in England in 1535 fourteen Dutch Anabaptists were 
burned alive, two of them in London, the others being 
scattered in various towns, doubtless as a warning to 
others. In 1538 six more were burned at the stake. 
In 1539 a body of thirty-one w T ere driven out and fled 
to Holland where they were beheaded. In 1575 two 
were burned alive. Twenty-six were thus martyred in 
a few years in different places, but this is only the 
beginning of the list of English Baptist martyrs. We 
have no records of an Inquisition in England to fur- 
nish information as to those who were put to death 

♦Religious Liberty and the Baptists, p. 17. 



PEKSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 103 

or died in prison, else the list would be very much 
extended. Of this the statement of Orchard may be 
taken as an indication, who says, that "the computation 
of those who suffered for non-conformity between the 
restoration and the revolution amounted to seventy 
thousand families ruined and eight thousand persons 
destroyed, though the calculation was not finished. 
The property of which they were plundered, consisting 
of money and estates, is said to have amounted to twelve 
or fourteen millions 1 ' — of pounds, which would be from 
sixty to seventy millions of dollars. A large part of 
these were Baptists. On the eleventh of April, 1611, 
Edward Wightman gave up his life at the stake, and 
thus was closed by a Baptist the long list of English 
martyrs which had been begun two hundred and eleven 
years before by the burning of another Baptist, William 
Sawtry. But fines, disabilities and imprisonment 
followed them, however, until the Act of Toleration in 
1689 when active persecution ceased. 

Yet not even now are Baptists or other dissenters on 
an equality with those who belong to the state church, 
as they are still shut out from various positions and 
advantages and are still taxed for the support of a clergy 
which knows little of the gospel and is often of the 
"sporting" class if not positively immoral. So great a 
Baptist as Charles Spurgeon was obliged to the day of 
his death to pay taxes for the support of Episcopal 
ministers, and the younger brother of our own Dr. 
Williams,* a Baptist deacon in Wales, and whose father 
was also a Baptist deacon, is compelled to pay more 

*Dr. O. A. Williams, District Secretary of the American Baptist Home 
Mission Society. 



104 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

than one hundred dollars every year for the same 
purpose, while after doing this he can not pay one 
quarter of that sum for the support of his own pastor. 
If he did not pay it the officers would seize his cattle 
and his teams and his crops and sell them from him. 
The records of English Baptist history are meager and 
we are not able to give with any fulness either the story 
of their successes or their sufferings. 

At the time of the settlement of America the age of 
bloody religious persecutions was passing away, and we 
find no record that any Baptist in America was put to 
death for his opinions, except it may be as a result of 
exposure in imprisonment in cold jails and other like 
hardships. Jails and prisons in those days were 
miserable affairs and from this exposure some did die, 
as really martyrs as if they had been beheaded. Yet 
they were banished, they were whipped, they were 
stoned, they were hunted with dogs, they were dis- 
franchised, they were robbed of their homes and their 
living, for preaching, for baptizing, for observing 
together the Lord's Supper, for refusing to have their 
babies sprinkled, for going out of church when other 
people had their babies sprinkled, for refusing to attend 
the preaching of unconverted ministers, and even for 
meeting together privately to pray. Everywhere they 
were taxed for the support of the state churches or 
"standing order," and when they refused to pay such 
taxes on the ground that it was recognizing man's 
authority to dictate in matters which pertain only to 
God, their property was taken by force and sold, often 
for a mere fraction of its value. This, of course, was 



PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 105 

less grievous than to be beheaded or burned at the stake, 
yet in those days of poverty it was sufficiently galling 
and the cause of much hardship and suffering. Men 
sometimes rave and swear even now when compelled to 
pay assessments upon their property for improvements 
which they do not desire and for which they can not 
afford to pay, and it is no matter for complacency even 
for a christian man to have his lasi cow or his team or 
his home sold perforce by the sheriff, and the money 
given to a man in whom he has no confidence either as 
a man or as a christian minister, and who is moreover, 
the representative of a hateful religious oppression. 

The story of the banishment of Roger Williams in 
October, 1635, and his consequent sufferings is one with 
which we may all be supposed to be familiar, and there 
is not time to recount it here save to say that the main 
opinion for which he was banished, namely, that the 
magistrate has no right to punish men for a breach of 
those commandments which concern the duties of men 
to Grod only, is now a cardinal principle in the creed of 
every true American. 

The shameful whipping of Obadiah Holmes in Boston 
in 1651, for quiet worship in a private house and because 
he "did baptize such as were baptized before," is well 
known; but it is not so well known that John Spur and 
John Hazle were each sentenced to ten lashes or the 
payment of forty shillings for simply taking Holmes by 
the hand with a "Blessed be God," as he was led from 
the whipping post. Friends paid their fine without 
their consent. Hazle was sixty years old and quite 
infirm, and had come more than fifty miles to comfort 



106 THE BAPTIST IN HISTOBY. 

his old friend in prison. He died on the way before 
reaching home again. Thirteen persons suffered in one 
way or another for expressing sympathy with Holmes. 

In Boston May 7th, 1668, brethren Thomas Gould, 
William Turner and John Farnum were banished for 
holding Baptist views, but they refused to go and 
were therefore imprisoned. After four months a petition 
signed by sixty-five persons of standing was received 
by the court for their relief, but so far was it from 
accomplishing its object that the signers were severely 
reprimanded by the court and fined for their humanity. 
March 6th, 1680, the Baptist meeting house in Boston 
was nailed up by the marshall and the people held their 
service in the yard, "Itt being a cold wind yt day butt 
through grace none received any harm.' 1 The church 
record says, "Butt to returne our Dores being nayled up 
we provided A shedd which we made Against ye howse 
with bords, butt coming ye next lords day expecting to 
meete under our shedd, we found our dores sett open & 
consulting by ourselves whether to goe in, we considered 
the Court had not donn itt legally Acting by noe law,' ; 
so they went in and worshipped. 

Not alone in Massachusetts was there persecution but 
in some of the other colonies as well, and the severest 
of all and the longest continued struggle was in Virginia. 
Here the culmination of oppressive laws was reached 
in 1611, when it was required that every one go to an 
Episcopal minister and give an account of his views. 
If he refused to go he was to be whipped. If he then 
refused to go he was to be whipped twice, and if he 
still refused, he was to be whipped every day until he 



PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 107 

did go. How galling such a provision was and how 
belittling to one's self respect, perhaps an independent 
and self respecting Baptist can understand better than 
any one else. Many ministers in Virginia were arrested 
and imprisoned, the manner of it adding indignity to 
the arrest itself. They were sometimes dragged from 
the platform while preaching or even wdiile praying and 
taken away to be imprisoned or fined or publicly 
whipped. There appear among those thus treated the 
names of the three Craigs, Waller, Webber, Childs, 
Anthony, Eastin, Weatherford, Tanner, Walker, Ware, 
Maxfield, Loval, Greenwood, Young and a host of others. 
Joseph Ware was hunted w T ith dogs. James Ware and 
James Pitman were imprisoned for having preaching 
in their houses. John Koons, Thomas Wafford and 
others carried the scars of their whippings to their 
graves. James Ireland was imprisoned in Culpepper 
jail where powder was put under him to blow him up, 
brimstone was burned to suffocate him and poison 
administered to kill him; but he lived to preach the 
gospel a number of years more and win many souls. 
On the very site of that Culpepper jail stands today a 
Baptist church wherein more than two hundred mem- 
bers regularly worship. 

In New York, in Connecticut, in South Carolina and 
in other colonies Baptists were harassed to a less degree. 
They were taxed as others for the support of Episcopal 
or Congregational ministers and for these taxes their 
property and their homesteads were taken away. They 
were also imprisoned on various charges and fined, for 
there were many ways of harassing Baptists even when 



108 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

they could not be directly persecuted for their opinions. 
These arrests were so timed in many cases as to work 
the most discomfort possible. The mother of Isaac 
Backus, the first American Baptist historian, for exam- 
ple, a widow fifty-four years old, was arrested at nine 
o'clock at night, October 15th, 1752, and with several 
others taken seventeen miles to jail in a cold October 
rain, where she was kept thirteen days until her fine 
was paid by some person unknown. There is in my 
own church a very intelligent and faithful old lady 
whose grandfather's grandfather, an old man of eighty 
years, was arrested at the same time of night and while 
preparing for bed. He was taken away without being 
allowed to resume the clothing he had laid off, and kept 
for some time in a cold jail without fire or bed-clothes. 
It was evidently the hope of his captors that the expos- 
ure would kill him but his physical system, like his 
faith, was of too rugged a nature to be easily destroyed. 
The charges against him were of a trumped up character 
while his real crime was that he was too outspoken a 
Baptist.* 

But when we have given the record of the imprison- 
ments and martyrdoms of our ancestors in the faith we 
have not by any means told all the story of indignities 
and sufferings. There was much that can not be put 
on record and yet, perhaps, was not less hard to bear 
sometimes than actual suffering: the contemptuous 
treatment of their appeals and petitions, while others 
were respectfully listened to; the mean spitefulness 

*It is a matter of interest to me that in every audience that has heard 
these lectures someone has afterwards come to me with a relation of 
similar experiences in their own family or family line. 



PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. 109 

which was shown them by officers, courts and people 
alike; the way in which laws were devised to harass 
them and the unfairness with which other laws were 
interpreted when applied to them; the bitter prejudice 
they met and the misconstructions put upon their 
motives; the scorn of those who were far beneath them 
in integrity of character and spiritual strength; all these 
things and many more made their lives a daily trial. 
To bear all this and go right on, doing that which was 
right in the sight of God and trusting Him to vindicate 
their cause in his own time, bearing patiently what 
they must and not answering scorn with hatred — that 
is heroism; a heroism we cannot afford, for our own 
benefit, to overlook or forget. 

As we read this long and distressing story of how an 
innocent and faithful people have been hounded and 
murdered, harassed and hated because they had firm 
convictions as to the truth of Christ and faithfully 
followed them, is it any wonder to us that Baptists have 
struggled and plead, always and everwhere, for religious 
liberty, and that they have been the foremost opposers 
of every form of church oppression and of that union 
of church and state which makes such oppression 
possible? 

The question cannot fail to present itself, was it 
worth while to suffer thus for these religious opinions? 
Why be so stubborn for a principle? Would it not 
have been better to lay aside their convictions and save 
themselves this distress? Why did they endure such 
things? They suffered these things because they had 
consciences, and we cannot too much honor those who 



110 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

hold to principle rather than policy. Because their 
opinions were not opinions merely, but convictions as 
to God's own truth which no man is at liberty to dis- 
regard. Because they knew that God had spoken and 
they dare not disobey his word. They suffered for the 
same reason that so many now stand apart from other 
professed christians to be misjudged and sneered at as 
self-righteous and narrow minded; because they would 
have no fellowship with what they knew was contrary 
to God's word and subversive of the vital principles of 
Christianity. 

They suffered because they were converted men and 
women. They knew what spiritual experience of 
salvation is and valued the presence of Jesus in their 
souls more than life itself. They could not go back or 
deny the truth. They suffered because they loved their 
families and longed for their salvation. The prohibition 
of their activities was a prohibition of salvation to their 
loved ones, for they knew that they were mistaughtand 
deluded by their own ministers — blind leaders of the 
blind — and they must preach to them and they must pray 
for them, and for this multitudes suffered and multitudes 
died. Mark this well, that the opposition to the Baptists 
was an opposition to the preaching of the true principles 
of the gospel, by which alone man can be saved. They 
knew that men had no right to deny them the right to 
obey God and teach others to obey him, and do it, too, 
in the name of religion; had no right to kill and plunder 
and force and tax for matters in which it is the right of 
God alone to judge, and they would not give up a true 
principle for a false one. They were not cranks or 



PERSECUTIONS AND SUFFERINGS. Ill 

fanatics, nor were they merely stubborn. They were 
the best and purest of the men and women of their time 
and we need not sneer at them, especially when we 
remember that if they had not resisted the corrupted 
Christianity of their day and taught a better, no other 
would have been known. Men in their day drowned 
and burned heretics and "thought that they offered 
service unto God,' 1 and but for their sufferings and 
teaching would be doing it yet, and we ourselves, instead 
of rejoicing in the free grace and presence of Jesus 
Christ, would have been still under the blighting and 
damning influence of a priestly church. 

But why did men inflict such things upon their 
fellow men, — pure minded people too, and innocent of 
any crime? Why should christians persecute christ- 
ians? Because they were not christians. They were 
of a church which was no true church and recipients 
of a salvation which saves nobody, and yet regarded 
themselves as the true and only church of Christ. The 
cruelty of their work, the treachery and injustice to 
which they descended to gain their ends is witness 
against them that they knew nothing of Christ. Their 
salvation was only one of rites and ceremonies and they 
had no comprehension of personal faith, personal obedi- 
ence and personal responsibility to a personal Saviour. 
A late writer well says, "To say the church did it is 
blasphemy. It was the work of fiends incarnate." There 
were some, however, whose noble service and pure lives 
make us hesitate to affirm that they were not christians, 
who yet endorsed and encouraged these persecutions and 
without whose consenting influence they would not have 



112 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

been carried on. Of such we can only say that they could 
not trust the power of the truth but must try to bolster 
it tip by force. They could not trust the consciences of 
men to make them accept the truth when it was seen, nor 
could they trust God to watch over his own work and 
vindicate his own way. But more than all, they did not 
comprehend that there might be realms of truth where 
they had not traveled nor admit the possibility that 
their victims might be right and" they themselves mis- 
taken; and yet we know that they were mistaken — 

awfullv mistaken. 

*/ 

There was yet another motive which worked mightily 
in this direction, and that was the priestly instinct that 
ever seeks to thrust itself into power and influence and 
is exceedingly jealous of whatever interferes; that same 
power which brought Jesus himself to the cross. It 
was the ambition for church power, which is still such 
a mighty motive in the world and leads to many sadly 
unchristian things. It w T as not a conviction that the 
gospel would not be taught and souls w T ould not be 
saved, if these heretics had their way, that led to their 
persecution, but an alarm lest the church should be 
shorn of her power and her priests be left without a 
following and so without influence and glory. 

But does not this record give us more of an appreci- 
ation of our christian liberty, and does it not inspire us 
to more of a spirit of loyalty to the truth and resistance 
to error, and to a determination that we will be worthy 
successors of those who fought the good fight and kept 
the faith, until we also shall receive the crown ? Let us 
never be known as degenerate children of a noble 
ancestry. 



"He hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted, 
to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening 
of the prison to them that are bound." 

" For freedom did Christ set us free; stand fast, 
therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of 
bondage" 



IV. 



BAPTIST INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT, 



The natural condition of barbarism and heathenism 
is tyranny; we see that illustrated everywhere in the 
heathen world of today as in the days past. Barbarism 
is the reign of brute force unguided by right moral 
principles or rules of justice, and barbarism and heath- 
enism go together. The rule of heathenism has always 
been an irresponsible monarchy, which is tyranny, and 
even when in brilliant periods as in Greece and Rome 
there has been something like popular government, it 
has sunken back again into monarchy. The history of 
Christianity has been a history of civilization; and the 
history of civilization has been the history of peoples 
struggling for their natural rights against ancient 
oppressions, hereditary privileges and the time honored 
usurpation by a few or by an individual of the prerog- 
atives that belong to all alike; and so through this 
struggle have grown up governments by the people and 
for the people, instead of for the few and by the few. 
The people have won their rights only after a long 
conflict and many defeats, as witness the growth of 



116 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

liberty and constitutional government in England and 
in France, and the struggle now going on in Germany 
and Russia. 

Again, the gospel has always been the great agent 
and basis of liberty wherever the gospel has been 
preached in its truth and purity. A study of modern 
missions in connection with this thought is most inter- 
esting; to see how the entrance of the gospel into 
heathen nations has broken up ancient and cruel 
despotisms and lifted the people up into civil liberty. 
The gospel emphasizes the dignity of man as an indi- 
vidual, a redeemed soul, of infinite worth in the sight of 
God, of dignity and importance because capable of 
becoming a child of God, and therefore possessing 
individual responsibility and individual rights. Thus 
the man is brought into a consciousness of himself and 
into rebellion against the usurpation of unjust authority, 
and in the end, out from under the dominion of tyranny 
into the enjoyment of popular rights. So wherever the 
gospel goes liberty and a just government follow. 

It might be expected therefore, that that church 
which has best preserved the purity of the New Testa- 
ment teaching would not be without its influence on 
civil government; that its influence would be on the 
side of the largest and truest liberty, and just so we find 
it. A state church has never been a pure church, and 
a state church has never been the friend of liberty. In 
the nature of the case it cannot be. It derives its 
prestige and power from the favor of government, and 
its privileged priests have the same motive for preserv- 
ing their authority over the people that the privileged 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 117 

ruler has, and their sympathies in every struggle will 
be with him. Always the dissenting churches have 
been those that have been friendly to the people and 
foremost in the struggle for popular rights; and among 
these, that church which has been the farthest from the 
established form and nearest to the Apostolic pattern 
has been the very foremost. 

Moreover the church is always behind the govern- 
ment and profoundly influencing it, in spirit as well as 
form, and has been from the days of Nebuchadnezzar 
to the present. Whether in England or America, in 
Spain, Mexico or Switzerland, the influence of prevail- 
ing religious ideas is seen in government. For the 
religious feeling is deepest of all feelings and religious 
ideas run through all a man's activities and their tone 
and color are seen in all his life. Men are first moved 
in their religious nature and the ideas thus received 
work out into their due fruitage in social life and civil 
life. A revolution in church therefore, means, sooner 
or later, a revolution in state; a revolution in religion 
means a revolution in government. 

The struggle for religious liberty therefore, has had 
a large part in history and has been at the bottom of 
many a political movement. Keligious liberty has 
carried with it civil liberty, and while men have been 
struggling for liberty to worship God they have also, 
though perhaps unwittingly, been working out a larger 
liberty for all mankind. To whom then, is due the 
present victory and largeness of liberty in which we 
stand? Whose are the slain who fell in the battle and 
whose were the wounds and the groans, the toil and the 



118 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

weariness and whose should be the crown ? 

There is a very natural disposition to think that what 
we ourselves believe we and our fathers have always 
believed, and that the things we now hold are the things 
that our fathers fought for. Every kind of a belief 
seeks to prove for itself an antiquity, and every kind 
of a society seeks to show that the benefits men enjoy 
are the result of its ancient influence; and so those in 
these days who were not in the battle are claiming the 
victory, nay, even those who fought against the now 
triumphant truth. Hence it comes to pass that those 
principles which for centuries were peculiar to the 
Baptists, and which in the early days no others contended 
for, are now largely adopted by those who are scarcely 
willing to admit that they have not always held them, 
and what is due to their long and painful struggle is 
now claimed by others as their own victory. I do not 
wish in the least to disparage others nor to glorify 
ourselves, and have no sympathy at all with the feeling 
that because we are we therefore we are, and of right 
ought to be, the people; but we have been so often 
disparaged and our achievements so often appropriated 
by others that it is due to ourselves that a just state- 
ment be made. 

We are not now alone in our insistence that the state 
and the church are separate and distinct, and that neither 
the church should interfere in political matters nor the 
state seek to prescribe rules for the church. We are 
now, in other words, no more loyal to the idea of com- 
plete religious liberty than those of other denominations 
whose spiritual ancestors did not see these things thus. 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 119 

An attempt by court or government to establish one 
church above another or to hinder anyone from adopting 
such forms of religious belief or practice as he might 
choose would raise a universal outcry and would be no 
more quickly resented by Baptists than by Episcopa- 
lians, Presbyterians or Congregationalists. But it was 
not always so. 

Let it not be thought that we claim for ourselves the 
entire credit of human freedom, or claim that Baptists 
have been the sole cause of the liberties we enjoy. 
Every movement of religious revival and reform has 
been a movement towards at least partial liberty, and 
besides the religious influence that has been at work, 
there is in the heart of every man a feeling of natural 
right which has sought to gain its own. Some things, 
however, are true, and some things are due to Baptist 
principles in the past and in the present, and these 
things we will try to indicate. 

First then, Baptists were the first to declare the 
doctrine of complete religious liberty and have always 
been the leaders in the struggle for its attainment, and 
to them more than to any other body is due the credit 
of its final attainment. Perhaps there was a reason for 
this. They were more persecuted than any others and 
therefore more longed for peace and liberty. They 
were still oppressed when others had rest and therefore 
strove for it still when others were satisfied. But more 
than all, they had a principle of liberty which did not 
find satisfaction in anything less than complete freedom, 
and which would not rest until the last possible weapon of 
oppression was destroyed, namely, that man, in matters 



120 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

of religion, is responsible only to God. This thought 
was fundamental with them and would not let them 
rest under any compromise or mere toleration. There 
were others who joined in the struggle, such as the 
Quakers, and there were those who at different times 
sought and obtained a partial freedom for themselves, 
but they were the first and the chief and the only body 
who always and everywhere have stood for complete 
liberty for all men. This spirit 'of liberty they have 
also carried out among themselves, and there is no 
denomination where there is more complete liberty of 
thought and action, limited only by the requirements of 
the divine Word, than among them. 

That Baptists were the first to plead for equal rights 
and full religious liberty for all men there is universal 
testimony among candid writers. These are the words 
of Bancroft the historian: "The Baptist party, whose 
trophy from the first was freedom of conscience, un- 
limited freedom of mind, was trodden under foot with 
foul reproaches and most arrogant scorn, and its history 
is written in the blood of the German peasantry; but 
its principles, safe in their immortality, escaped with 
Roger Williams to Providence, and his colony is the 
witness that naturally the paths of the Baptists are the 
paths of freedom."* Macaulay remarks that Bossuet 
was able to say "we fear with too much truth, that on 
one point all christians had long been unanimous — the 
right of the civil government to propagate the truth by 
the sword: that even heretics had been orthodox as to 
this right, and that the Anabaptists and Socinians were 

*Hist. U. S„ Boston, 1855, II, 66-7. 






INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 121 

the first who called it in question. 1 ' * Schaff, in his 
"Progress of Religious Freedom," says: "Baptists and 
Quakers alone were consistent advocates of universal 
toleration and put it into their creeds." Judge Durfee, 
writing of Roger Williams, says: "The future of Rhode 
Island, and to some extent the future of the world, 
hung suspended on the issue of the struggle. It was a 
pivotal transaction in universal history. His doctrine 
was that every man has a natural right to follow the 
dictates of his conscience as long as he keeps the civil 
peace; a right which the state can neither give nor take 
away nor control, even with the consent of the individ- 
ual, since no man can absolve himself from fealty to his 
own conscience. The right has never been expressed 
with more completeness. This is his glory, that he, 
first among men, made it a living element of the state, 
turning it from thought to fact, giving it a corporate 
existence in which it could perpetuate and practically 
approve itself. 1 ' Pastors of other denominations some- 
times give the same testimony, as when Rev. Dr. 
Leonard Swain, pastor of the Central Congregational 
church of Providence, Rhode Island, said at the centen- 
nial of the Warren Association in September, 1867, 
"You Baptists fought the battle of religious liberty and 
we all enjoy the fruits of the victory." 

Every Baptist martyr has died proclaiming this 
doctrine; every Baptist preacher and writer has set it 
forth; many confessions of faith have specifically 
declared it and denied to the civil power any authority 
whatever to compel, restrain or punish in matters of 

*See Bossuet, Vol. X, p. 356 



122 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

religion. The treatises, discussions, remonstrances and 
appeals upon this topic have been innumerable. 

The first confession of faith to declare the doctrine 
of full religious liberty was that of the Swiss Anabap- 
tists in the year 1527. This confession makes a clear 
distinction between the temporal authority and the 
spiritual and entirely disclaims the use of the temporal 
in the church. It says: "In law the sword is ordained 
over the wicked for punishment and death, and the civil 
power is ordained to use it. But in the perfection of 
Christ, excommunication is pronounced only for warn- 
ing and for exclusion of him who has sinned, without 
death of the flesh, only by warning and the command 
not to sin again. " It has been generally supposed that 
its author was Michael Sattler, who was burned at the 
stake three months later. The Confession of certain 
English Anabaptists of 1611 says: " We believe that the 
magistrate is not by virtue of his office to meddle with 
religion or matters of conscience, to force or compel 
men to this or that form of religion or doctrine, but to 
leave the christian religion free to every man's con- 
science, and to handle only civil trangressions, injuries 
and wrongs of man against man, in murder, adultery, 
theft etc., for Christ only is the King and Lawgiver of 
the church and conscience."* The confessions of 1643 
and 1660 and others declare at great length the duty 
of obedience to civil magistrates in civil things, but, "In 
case the civil power do, or shall at any time impose things 
about matters of religion, which we, through conscience 
to God, cannot actually obey; then ... we will not yield, 

♦History Anti-Pedobaptism, p. 392. 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 123 

nor in such cases in the least actually obey them; yet 
humbly purposing, in the Lord's strength, patiently to 
suffer whatsoever shall be inflicted upon us for our 
conscionable forbearance."* Compare with this the 
language of other confessions of about the same date 
as, for example, the Westminster Confession, Chapter 
XX: "And for their publishing of such opinions, or 
maintaining of such practices as are contrary to the 
light of nature or to the known principles of Christianity, 
whether concerning faith, worship or conversation; or 
to the power of godliness; or such erroneous opinions 
as, either in their own nature, or in the manner of 
publishing or maintaining them are destructive to the 
external peace and order which Christ hath established 
in the church; they may be lawfully called to account 
and proceeded against by the censures of the church, 
and by the power of the civil magistrate "\ Underbill, 
in his "Struggles and Triumphs of Religious Liberty," 
says: "There is not a confession nor a creed framed 
by any of the Reformers which does not give to the 
magistrate a coercive power in religion, and almost every 
one at the same time curses the resisting Baptists." 
Lecky says in his "History of Rationalism,' 1 "Persecu- 
tion in the sixteenth century was a distinct and definite 
doctrine, digested into elaborate treatises, indissolubly 
connected with a large portion of the received theology, 
developed by most enlightened theologians and enforced 
against most inoffensive sects." We have already seen 
that there was not a reformer of any eminence who did 
not uphold the persecution of those whom they called 

*Conf essiori of 1660. f The Confession now in use omits the last clause. 



124 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

heretics and make himself responsible for it. 

The first modern treatises on religious liberty were 
written by Baptists. Hubmeyer had written a powerful 
plea for religious liberty in "Heretics and their Burn- 
ers" about the year 1525, but the work has perished. 
The first treatise in English was by Leonard Busher in 
1614, entitled "Religion's Peace, or a Plea for Liberty 
of Conscience." It pleads "that it may be lawful for 
every person or persons, yea, Je\ts, Turks, Pagans and 
Papists, to write, dispute, confer and reason, print and 
publish any matter touching any religion either for or 
against whomsoever;" language which for breadth of 
liberality cannot be surpassed even in these days. In 
1615 appeared another: "Persecution for Religion 
Judged and condemned, by Christ's Unworthy Wit- 
nesses, His Majesty's Faithful Subjects, Commonly, 
but most Falsely called Anabaptists." It says: "Earth- 
ly authority belongeth to earthly kings, but spiritual 
authority belongeth to that one spiritual King who is 
King" of Kings." In 1620 appeared "A most humble 
Supplication of Many of the King's Majesty's Loyal 
Subjects," etc., which was written by a prisoner in 
Newgate prison. It was written in milk upon the 
paper stoppers of the bottles in which the milk was 
furnished and these fragments of writing were then 
arranged by the friends of the prisoners and published, 
and they show no small ability on the part of their 
author. Indeed, considering the circumstances of the 
writer the language used and the quotations made are 
very remarkable. It is a direct and pointed argument, 
quoting from the king's own words, the spirit of which 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVEKNMENT. 125 

can be judged from the following words in the conclu- 
sion: "You may make and mend your own laws and be 
judge and punisher of the transgressors thereof; but 
you cannot make or mend God's laws, they are perfect 
already. You may not add nor diminish, nor be judge 
or monarch of his church, that is Christ's right, he left 
neither you nor any mortal man his deputy, but only 
the Holy Ghost, as your highness acknowledged." 
This treatise, as Koger Williams said, was "written in 
milk and answered in blood." In 1642 Busher's treatise 
was reprinted. In 1647 appeared one by Thomas Richard- 
son; in 1660, one by prisoners in Maidstone jail; in 1662 
"Zion's Groans for her Distressed," by a committee of 
London Baptists; and in 1659 had appeared Milton's 
"Treatise of the Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, 
showing that it is not lawful for any human power on 
earth to compel in matters of religion." In those days 
no others taught the doctrine of full religious liberty. 
No writings can be adduced from that early time, except 
from Baptist authors, which taught that the right to 
worship God according to the dictates of one's own 
conscience was a natural right, belonging to every man. 
The first treatise on religious liberty by an American 
author was by Roger Williams in 1644. Mr. Hall, a 
congregational minister at Roxbury, had sent the treat- 
ise written in Newgate to Mr. John Cotton, famous in 
New England history, and his reply to that was by some 
one published and a copy of it came to Mr. Williams, 
who answered it in a famous treatise entitled "The 
Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience 
Discussed." Cotton replied in a treatise entitled "The 



126 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

Bloudy Tenent Washed and made White in the blood 
of the Lambe." Williams again answered in "The 
Bloody Tenent yet more Bloody by Mr. Cotton's En- 
devour to wash it white in the blood of the Lambe etc." 
This discussion created great interest, and the argu- 
ments of Mr. Williams in contrast with the rather 
choleric utterances of Mr. Cotton were of telling effect. 
Thus was the gauntlet thrown down and the controversy 
begun which was only to end with the complete vindi- 
cation of these principles and the destruction of 
religious tyranny in America. 

The first government ever organized on the basis of 
complete religious liberty, and the first in which that 
principle was ever fully recognized, was the Baptist 
government of Rhode Island. Here in their funda- 
mental law it was declared that "No person within the 
said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be in any way 
molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question 
for any difference of opinion in matters of religion 
which do not actually disturb the civil peace of our said 
colony; but that all and every person or persons, from 
time to time, and at all times hereafter, freely and fully 
have and enjoy his and their judgment and consciences 
in matters of religious concernment, they behaving 
themselves peaceably and quietly and not using this 
liberty to licentiousness and profaneness, nor to the 
civil injury or outward disturbance of others." This was 
no mere matter of form, for we find that a man was 
actually punished, for the first time in the history of 
the world perhaps, for interfering with another in 
religious matters. One Joshua Verin attempted to 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 127 

compel his wife to give up her religion and keep away 
from religious meetings, using abusive violence for this 
end, and the court decreed that he "for breach of 
covenant in restraining liberty of conscience shall be 
withheld from voting till he declare the contrary!" 
Moreover it was here in Rhode Island that, long before 
the days of Abraham Lincoln, his famous declaration 
"a government of the people, by the people and for the 
people" was for the first time made a reality. It was 
Roger Williams who first declared the principle of 
democracy which is the very foundation of our American 
government, that the sovereign power of government 
is in the people and in all the people. This principle 
was brought out in his opposition to those laws of 
Massachusetts which denied the franchise and the 
privileges of office to all who were not members of the 
church, and to the giving away by kings and rulers, 
through patents and monopolies, of lands and privileges 
which did not belong to them but to the people. Thus 
in thje first Baptist state was embodied that idea which 
was to rule the nation and is yet to rule the world. 

The first college to open its doors to all alike and 
offer its privileges and honors to every person without 
any religious test or requirement was the first college 
founded by Baptists, namely, Rhode Island College, 
now called Brown University, at Providence. All the 
universities of the old world were founded and controlled 
by state churches down to the middle of the last century 
and from them all dissenters were of course, excluded. 
Not all of them even yet are open to all alike. The 
first college to be foimded in this country was Harvard 



128 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

and its first President, Henry Dunster, after years of 
most distinguished service, during which he brought it 
up from an academy of uncertain prospects to a recog- 
nized college, was driven from the presidency because 
he had declared against infant baptism in a public 
sermon (for which he was indicted by the grand jury 
and convicted), and for refusing to have his own infant 
child baptized, for which he was & second time indicted 
and punished. A hundred years after this Tale College 
expelled students for choosing to worship with Separa- 
tists. In contrast to this, note the language of the 
charter of the first Baptist college in this country: "Into 
this liberal and catholic institution shall never be 
admitted any religious tests. But on the contrary all 
the members hereof shall enjoy free, absolute, and 
uninterrupted liberty of conscience, and the places of 
professors, tutors and all other officers, the President 
alone excepted, shall be free and open for all denom- 
inations of Protestants, and the youth of all religious 
denominations shall and may be admitted to the equal 
advantages, emoluments and honors of the college or 
university . . . and the sectarian differences shall not 
make any part of the public and classical instruction." 
The early Baptist ministers of this country were sneered 
at as illiterate ignoramuses, but they were shut out from 
schools of higher learning by religious tests to which 
they could not subscribe, and it was only with great 
difficulty that they secured one of their own. In no 
colony except Rhode Island could Baptists at that time 
have secured a charter for a college or a school of any 
kind. 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 129 

Secondly: Baptists were the first, and for centuries 
the only ones who grasped the idea of full religious 
liberty ; that is, not mere toleration but actual liberty, 
for toleration is one thing and liberty is quite another. 
This distinction is not always clearly made and there- 
fore much confusion on this point has resulted and 
many false claims have been made. Toleration is per- 
mission but liberty is exercise of absolute right, which 
asks no permission and refuses to receive any. Religious 
toleration says, "I grant you the privilege of worship- 
ing as you may choose;" but the very bestowment of 
a privilege implies the right to revoke that action and 
withdraw what has been bestowed, and liberty which is 
held only at the will of a master is no liberty at all. 
Religious liberty says, "Your choice of worship is no 
matter of mine; it is a thing which belongs to you by 
natural right; a privilege which I can neither give nor 
take away." Baptists would not be tolerated, would 
not accept as a privilege what they claimed as a natural 
right, and just upon their making of this distinction 
hangs all that religious freedom which is so precious to 
us. 

And again a distinction is to be made in that while 
others demanded liberty for themselves, Baptists de- 
manded it for all and w^ere willing to grant to others 
also what they desired for themselves. We have 
already seen how the Reformers urged their right to 
think for themselves when contending with the Papal 
power, and argued nobly for immunity from persecu- 
tion, and yet when they came into power, these very 
same men turned to persecute those who differed from 



130 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

them. The Puritans and Pilgrims likewise exiled 
themselves from home and native land in order to find 
freedom to worship God, and yet they, having come 
part way out of Papal corruptions and old world tyranny, 
were not willing to tolerate those who were minded to 
come all the way out. Baptists, on the other hand, 
both in theory and in practice, have granted to other 
men the right to hold and exercise whatever opinions 
they might choose, even though those opinions might 
seen to them infidel and destructive, and have defended 
them in that liberty, allowing only reasoning and per- 
suasion as the weapons to be used against them. 

The claim of leadership in the struggle for religious 
liberty has been made for almost every denomination, 
partly, perhaps, from a confusion of ideas, partly from 
a desire to make the best showing possible for one's 
own people. Episcopacy has made the claim, in spite 
of Laud and Smithfield, and put forward the treatise 
on "The Liberty of Prophesying" by Jeremy Taylor in 
1647 as being the pioneer in the discussion. It was 
indeed a noble plea for a churchman in his times to 
make, but this was not the first by nearly the life time 
of its author, for Pusher's treatise w r as published when 
Taylor was only a year old, and a number of others had 
also preceeded it. Moreover, when examined carefully, 
it comes far short of the positions taken in them; for 
Taylor excepts from his toleration those who deny 
fundamental articles, declares heresy "against an article 
of the creed' 1 (i. e. an essential), to be "a very grievous 
crime" and "worse than adultery or murder." He 
declares that "God hath made religion to grow up with 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 131 

empire and lean upon the arm of kings and it cannot 
well go alone;" and that the religion of the Anabap- 
tists is "as much to be rooted out as anything that is 
the greatest pest and nuisance to the public interest." 
At the best it is only a plea for toleration, not for full 
liberty, and besides it was written when he himself was 
under condemnation by the dominant party; but when 
he came to power again he found his liberal views some- 
what difficult of explanation in view of his practice and 
the fact that he deposed more than thirty Presbyterian 
pastors who refused to be episcopally ordained. The 
scenes of many a martyrdom in the old country and of 
New York and Virginia in the new, refute this claim. 

It has been claimed for Congregationalism, and with 
more plausibility than for some others, but Obadiah 
Holmes and Roger Williams and the multitude of 
suffering Baptists of Massachusetts refute this claim. 

It has been claimed for Presbyterianism; and indeed, 
Presbyterian writings make large claim for Presbyter- 
ianism that it has always been the great bulwark of 
liberty, and that to it the liberties of our own land are 
most largely due. As far as this country is concerned 
it is true that Presbyterians have been found, for the 
most part, on the side of liberty; but it is not true that 
they were the first to teach these doctrines or that they 
have taught liberty in its broadest, truest sense. Their 
history in England and Scotland and on the continent 
quite refutes their claims. Appeal has been made to 
their great documents, such as the Scotch League and 
Covenant, as being milestones on the road to liberty; 
but this Covenant, which was adopted by the General 



132 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

Assembly of Scotland, the Westminster Assembly and 
both houses of Parliament in 1643, was made, not for 
the securing of complete liberty to all men, but for the 
unifying and strengthening and enforcement of Pres- 
byterianism. Under it no minister but a Presbyterian 
could preach, and it bound its signers "that we shall in 
like manner without respect of persons, endeavor the 
extirpation of Popery, Prelacy, superstition, heresie, 
schisme, profaneness and whatever shall be found to be 
contrary to sound doctrine and the power of godliness," 
themselves, of course, being the sole judges of what was 
"contrary to sound doctrine," which is the vice of all 
such efforts. Because such large claims have been made 
for them, let me quote somewhat at length from various 
Presbyterian writings: 

Article XXIV of the first Scotch Confession, 1560: 
"Mairover, to Kings, Princes, Rulers and Magistrates, 
wee affirme that chieflie and most principallie the 
conservation and purgation of the Religiouns apper- 
teinis; so that not onlie they are appointed for civill 
policie bot also for maintenance of the trew Religioun, 
and for suppressing of Idolatrie and Superstitioun what- 
soever," etc. 

Second Book of Discipline of the church of Scotland, 
1578: "It perteinis to the office of a Christian magistrat 
to assist and manteine the discipline of the Kirk: and 
punish them civilly, that will not obey the censure of 
the same," etc. 

John Knox, History of the Reformation in Scotland, 
pp. 264-5. "In such places I say, it is not only lawful 
to punish to the death such as labor to subvert the true 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 133 

religion, but the magistrates and the people are bound 
to do so unless they will provoke the wrath of God 
against themselves." 

Richard Baxter, "Plain Scripture Proof of Infant 
Church Membership, and Baptism, 1 ' p. 246, London, 
1650: "My judgment in that much disputed point of 
liberty of Religion I have always freely made known. 
I abhor unlimited liberty and toleration of all and think 
myself easily able to prove the wickedness of it."* 

Professor A. H. Newman says, "From 1674 onward 
the Reformed (Calvinistic) church sought persistently 
to destroy the Mennonites, but they enjoyed the pro- 
tection of William the Silent and afterwards of Maurice 
of Nassau. The Synod of Dort in 1574 decided to 
exhort the government to tolerate no one who would 
not swear obedience to it, to compel the Mennonites to 
have their infants baptized, and in case of their refusal 
to turn them over to the Reformed ministers to be dealt 
with . . . Though their membership constituted as yet 
only a small fraction of the population, (one tenth 
according to some authorities), they sought to secure 
recognition as the established church of the land with 
power to coerce dissent." (And in the published report 
of a disputation), "The preface concludes with an 
impassioned appeal to the authorities to withdraw all 
protection from the Anabaptists, whose principles are 
declared to strike at the root of saving truth and of 
civil and religious order, and whose doctrine, founded 
in lying hypocrisy, eats as doth a gangrene.' 1 And 
again, "The most determined efforts on the part of the 

♦Appendix to Vedder's Shor History of Baptists. 



134 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

Oalvinists to crush out the Mennonites by the use of 
the civil power were continued almost without inter- 
mission throughout the seventeenth century. If the 
Mennonites were not destroyed root and branch . . . 
it was due to no lack of zeal on the part of the Reformed 
ministers but rather to their powers of endurance and 
the restraining influence of the government.""* 

But, strangest of all, the leadership in the struggle 
for religious liberty has been claimed by the Roman 
Catholics! That church at whose doors lie the crimes 
of the Waldensian murders, of St. Bartholomew's day 
and of the inquisition! That church which for ages 
has been drunk with the blood of the saints, and which 
in our own land today is seeking to undermine our 
liberties and destroy the bulwarks of our free institu- 
tions! Archbishop Hughes wrote in 1852, "The palm 
of having been the first to practice it (i. e. religious 
liberty), is due beyond all controversy to the Catholic 
colony of Maryland." But the Maryland act of Tolera- 
tion was not passed until 1649, when Rhode Island was 
already established, and it provided that blasphemy or 
denial of the divinity of Christ or the doctrine of the 
Trinity should be punished with death, and "persons 
using any reproachful word or speeches concerning the 
Blessed Virgin Mary or the Holy Apostles" should be 
fined, whipped or imprisoned and if obstinate, banished. 
Later oppressive laws were also passed, as in 1663 when 
a fine of a ton of tobacco was decreed upon any who 
should refuse the baptism of their children. 

Pope Gregory XVI in his encyclical letter of 1832 

♦History of Anti-Pedobaptism, pp. 318-20. 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 135 

declares "the opinion that for every one whatever is to 
be claimed and defended the liberty of conscience" 
to be "a most pestilent error," the "ravings of delirium,' 1 
and "that pest of all others most to be dreaded in a 
state, 1 ' and speaks of "that worst and never enough to 
be execrated and detestable liberty of the press. 11 Pius 
IX in his encyclical of 1864 utters similar sentiments. 
His language is very involved and verbose, but it clearly 
means that it is impious and absurd to maintain that 
the civil government ought not to make it a part of its 
duty to compel its subjects by penalties to observe the 
true religion; and in his accompanying "Syllabus of 
Errors" declares it a damnable error "that the church 
has not the power of availing herself of force or any 
direct or indirect temporal power."* 

One of the principal Roman Catholic organs has said, 
"Religious liberty, in the sense of liberty possessed by 
every man to choose his own religion, is one of the most 
wicked delusions ever foisted upon this age by the 
father of all deceit. Shall I hold out hopes to my 
erring Protestant brother that I will not meddle with 
his creed if he will not meddle with mine? Shall I 
tempt him to forget that he has no more right to his 
religious views than he has to my house or my purse 
or my life blood? No, Catholicism is the most intol- 
erant of creeds."f With this last statement we shall 
most certainly agree. 

Besides the broad promulgation of principles and the 
innumerable testimonies through their sufferings in so 
many places, there are some direct influences of Baptists 

*The full text is given in Littel's Living- Age, 18th March, 1865. 
fRelig. Lib. and Baptists, Dr. C. C. Bitting, p. 36. 



136 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

upon the struggle for religious liberty which we do well 
to note. Amid the general intolerance of the sixteenth 
century, Holland under William of Orange gives the 
only instance of broad-mindedness in religious matters. 
In 1572 the continent was ablaze with persecution and 
the soil of Holland was soaked with the blood of more 
than fifty thousand martyrs. Henry II of France and 
Philip II of Spain had compacted to make the Eoman 
Catholic church completely triumphant by put-ting to 
death every Protestant in the Netherlands and William 
had determined to arouse the Protestant population to 
throw off the Spanish yoke. He had spent his own 
money, had sold his plate and mortgaged his estates to 
carry on the war against Spain and was nearly obliged 
to give up the contest, when an apparently trivial 
circumstance gave him new courage. He was walking 
one day near his headquarters in discouragement and 
anxiety when two strangers approached him and en- 
quired for the Prince. Making himself known, he found 
that they were two Baptist preachers, John Friedericks 
and Dick Jans Cortenbosch, who had come to offer 
their services and enquire what they might do. They 
explained to him" their principles and he told them 
his need, upon which they promised to solicit money 
for the cause among their friends and were heartily 
thanked by the Prince. Many years of persecution 
had left to the Baptists very little of the world's goods, 
yet by strenuous exertion and after one collector had 
lost his life in the effort, they raised and sent in a 
thousand florins. When nobles and wealthy men were 
proving selfish and false this material help was of far 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 137 

more value than it might have seemed, and afterwards 
when rebuking the authorities at Middleburg for at- 
tempted oppression, the Prince praises the Baptists who 
had brought their contributions at the peril of their 
lives, and commands that they be let alone. The 
Mennonites who were a branch of the Anabaptists, 
contributed liberally to the materials of war although it 
was against their principles to fight, and often furnished 
substitutes. 

In England under Cromwell the Baptists came grandly 
to the front to strike for liberty, and they loyally sup- 
ported him until it was evident that he was going wrong 
and usurping powers that would only end in irrespon- 
sible rule again. Some of his most trusted officers and 
counselors like General Harrison and Colonel Hutch- 
ison were Baptists, and so were very many of the 
common soldiers of his army. 

The American Encyclopedia, Article, "Baptists," says : 
"In England, from the time of Henry VIII to William 
III, a full century and a half, the Baptists struggled to 
gain their footing and to secure liberty of conscience to 
all. From 1611 they issued appeal after appeal, 
addressed to the king, the parliament and the people, 
in behalf of soul liberty, written with a breadth of view 
and force of argument hardly since exceeded. Yet until 
the Quakers arose in 1660, the Baptists stood alone in 
its defense amid universal opposition. In the time of 
Cromwell they first gained a fair hearing, and under 
the lead of Milton and Vane would have changed the 
whole system of church and state but for the treason of 
Monk. In the time of Charles II the prisons were 



138 THE BAPTIST IN HISTOBY. 

filled with their confessors and martyrs, yet their 
principles gradually gained ground in the public mind 
and prepared the way for the revolution of 1688. 'The 
share which the Baptists took' says Dr. Williams, 'in 
shoring up the fallen liberties of England, and in 
infusing new vigor and liberality into the constitution 
of that country is not generally known. Yet to this 
body English liberty owes a debt it can never acknow- 
ledge. Among the Baptists christian freedom found 
its earliest, its stanchest, its most consistent and its 
most disinterested champions.' " 

But as the most marked development of Baptist 
strength has been here in America, so here also has 
been their most marked influence on the civil govern- 
ment. This influence began with Roger Williams and 
that discussion of principles which led to his exile and 
the founding of Rhode Island Colony upon principles 
of absolute soul liberty. "This small territory was 
settled under circumstances new and peculiar, and here 
were planted principles as to religious freedom, which 
at the time, in the fullest and most literal sense of the 
statement, all the world opposed as visionary in theory, 
dangerous, disorganizing and impractible. The system 
adopted by the founder of this state, on the principles 
of an unlimited toleration of all the varying creeds of 
theology, and of the unfettered and unobstructed exer- 
cise of all the rites and forms of religion which erring 
and imperfect mortals might choose to adopt, was 
treated with ridicule and contempt, with banter and 
abuse, not only by a pampered priesthood and lordly 
prelates, but also by the very men who had long been 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 139 

the victims of ecclesiastical oppression, and who. by the 
intolerant laws of the old country, had been driven to 
seek an asylum in these then Western wilds.* But the 
influence of this little government has been tremendous. 
Judge Story says, "In the code of laws established by 
them, we read for the first time since Christianity 
ascended the throne of the Caesars the declaration that 
conscience should be free, and that men should not be 
punished for worshipping God in the way they were 
persuaded he requires." Senator Anthony said, in a 
speech delivered upon the occasion of the unveiling of 
the monument to Roger Williams in the National Cap- 
itol, January 9th, 1872, "Religious freedom, which now 
by general consent underlies the foundation principle 
of ^civilized government, was at that time looked upon 
as a wilder theory than any proposition, moral, political, 
or religious, that has since engaged the serious attention 
of mankind. It was regarded as impracticable, disor- 
ganizing, impious, and if not utterly subversive of 
social order, it was not so only because its manifest 
absurdity would prevent any serious effort to enforce 
it." And yet Gervinus the German philosophical 
writer says of Roger Williams in the introduction to 
his history of the civilization of the nineteenth century, 
"He formed in Rhode Island a small and new society 
in which perfect freedom in matters of faith was allow r ed , 
and in which the majority ruled in all civil affairs. 
Here in a little state the fundamental principles of 
political and ecclesiastical liberty practically prevailed 
before they were even taught in any of the schools of 

*Benedict, Hist. Bap., p. 423. 



140 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

philosophy in Europe . . . But not only have these 
ideas and these forms of government maintained them- 
selves here, but precisely from this little state have they 
extended themselves throughout the United States. 
They have conquered the aristocratic tendencies in 
Carolina and New York, the high church in Virginia, 
the theocracy in Massachusetts and the monarchy in 
all America. They have given laws to a continent and, 
formidable through their moral influence they lie at the 
bottom of all the democratic movements which are now 
shaking the nations of Europe. " 

Perhaps the direct influence of Baptists upon the 
spirit and form of the American government can best 
be understood by considering several different particu- 
lars, such as their organized effort in Massachusetts and 
Virginia to secure liberty by law, their share in the 
"Revolution, their influence through Jefferson and 
Madison, and their influence in the adoption of the 
Constitution of the United States and in securing the 
First Amendment. 

I. The Baptists in New England had suffered much 
from the tyrannical oppressions of the "Standing Order 11 
as it was called, or in other words the Congregational 
church, which was established and upheld by law. A 
very brief perusal of the history of that time is sufficient 
to show how determined the authorities were that their 
own doctrines and practices should be preserved intact, 
as if they were entirely without error, and every 
other doctrine or opinion absolutely prohibited. Such 
indeed, was their intolerance that they were more 
than once rebuked by the king and even by their 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 141 

Congregational brethren of intolerant England. A 
sketch of the laws passed for a hundred years from 
1631 shows this determination very clearly. In that 
year citizenship was refused to all but members of the 
churches; then one uniform (Congregational) order for 
the churches was established and any other kind of a 
church forbidden; then excommunicated members were 
fined for not seeking to get back into the church and 
threatened with imprisonment and banishment while 
every one was compelled to "voluntarily contribute" 
for "upholding the ordinances" on pain of being sold 
out by the constable. Banishment was decreed for 
opposition to infant baptism or. if one should "purposely 
depart the congregation at the administration of this 
ordinance. 11 If any staid away from church they were 
to pay five shillings fine. If one renounced his member- 
ship in the "Standing Order" (by turning Baptist for 
instance), he was fined forty shillings a month until he 
came back. If he scoffed at the gospel or at the minister 
he was to be pilloried. Quakers were to be whipped and 
imprisoned immediately upon their arrival in the colony 
and banished; if they came back, one ear was to be cut 
off; upon the second return the other ear was to be cut off; 
the third time their tongue was to be bored through with 
a red hot iron and the fourth time they were to suffer 
death. These laws against the Quakers however, were 
not long in force. No one could build a church without 
license from the (Congregational) court and every one 
must pay tax for the support of the regular minister. No 
one could preach within the parish of a regular minister 
without his consent, and of course he would consent to 



142 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

none but his own kind. In 1728 a law was passed (to 
be in force only five years) ostensibly to relieve Baptists 
from taxation for the support of other ministers and 
this was followed by others; but they required them 
to acknowledge themselves as #;z#-baptists, — r^-bap- 
tizers, which was an intentional slur, they were hedged 
about with requirements of registration, certificates and 
so forth, and so defective that they could not be enforced, 
so that they were an added source of aggravation and 
expense instead of being a relief. Finally the Baptists 
determined to make a firm and united stand against all 
this and secure their liberties and their rights, and after 
due consultation a systematic and determined effort was 
begun for the repeal of unjust laws and the securing to 
all full liberty of conscience. At a meeting of the 
Warren Association in 1769, (which then practically 
included all New England Baptists), a committee was 
appointed to secure full information of particular cases 
of injustice, formulate petitions and present them to the 
authorities, prepare appeals to the people, and in every 
way agitate for religious liberty. This committee on 
grievances was continued for thirty-six years. The 
next year Bev. John Davis was appointed the official 
agent of the churches for this purpose and upon 
his death two years later Bev. Isaac Backus was 
appointed in his stead and held the position for fifteen 
years, and in fact was a leader until his death in 1806. 
Here then, was a Baptist organization with a paid agent 
the sole purpose and effort of which was to break the 
yoke of religious oppression and secure equal rights of 
conscience for all. That their cause was just would 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 143 

abundantly appear if we had time for the relation of 
their losses of money and property, homesteads and 
even church and burial place, by reason of the unjust 
taxation, to say nothing of endless aggravation and 
personal suffering and loss in imprisonments and fruit- 
less processes of law. 

For a long time their efforts were laughed at and 
themselves ignored. As Dr. Hovey says, "Their prin- 
ciples were carricatured, their purposes maligned, their 
integrity questioned, their petitions slighted and their 
hopes deferred ;"* but finally they gained a hearing and 
the justice of their case was seen. The Great Awakening 
in 1741 and succeeding years added many to their 
numbers and increased their influence; for the Separates 
and New Lights, as they were called, were Baptists in 
principle and in large numbers became such in name, 
sometimes a whole church with its pastor avowing 
themselves as Baptists and being received as such. 
They could no longer be ignored nor their rights denied, 
and these rights were at length granted, although it was 
not until 1833 that the establishment was finally broken 
and the last law against full religious liberty swept from 
the statute books of Massachusetts. 

II. A like systematic attempt was made also in 
Virginia, where Baptists were even more bitterly 
persecuted than in Massachusetts and where the conflict 
was more fierce and the victory more quickly won. The 
charter of Virginia made Episcopacy the exclusive 
religion of the state, and under this charter many 
oppressive laws were passed at different times. The 

*Lifeand Times of Isaac Backus, p. 157, 



144 THE BAPTIST IN HISTOKY. 

law of 1611 already noticed required every one to go to 
an Episcopal minister and give an account of himself, 
and for the first refusal he was to be whipped, for the 
second to be whipped twice and to make public confes- 
sion, and for the third to be whipped every day until he 
would go. Episcopal ministers were supported and 
farms were bought for them by taxes laid upon every 
one. Fifty pounds of tobacco was the fine for staying 
away from Episcopal church service, and two thousand 
pounds for refusing to have a child sprinkled. Mar- 
riages and funerals could only be conducted by Episco- 
pal ministers. Every one but an Episcopal minister 
was forbidden to preach,, but the Baptists did preach, 
in private houses, in farm yards, in forests and even 
from jail windows, and thousands were converted. It 
seems to have been the need of concerted action against 
these oppressions which first brought about a state 
organization of the Baptists called the General Associ- 
ation, and this body went immediately to work. Their 
first victory was in 1775, when they secured the 
admission of Baptist chaplains to the army. This was 
a great step, for it implied their recognition as a 
denomination. One movement followed another in 
which they were ably supported by Thomas Jefferson 
and James Madison and Patrick Henry, whose political 
prominence made them invaluable allies, until in 1779 
the laws authorizing taxation for the support of the 
clergy were abolished, religious freedom was established, 
and the establishment entirely done away. A proposi- 
tion was afterwards made to tax all alike for the support 
of religion but allowing each one to designate his money 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 145 

to whichever church he chose. Episcopalians, Metho- 
dists, and some Presbyterians petitioned for the passage 
of this measure, but the influence against it was too 
strong and it was dropped. The work was finally 
finished in 1802, when the parish farms, paid for by 
taxation, were ordered to be sold and the money applied 
to public uses. We may probably accept the testimony 
of (Episcopal) Bishop Hawkes when he says, "The 
Baptists were the principle promoters of this work, and 
in truth, aided more than any other denomination in its 
accomplishment;" and the testimony of Bishop Meade, 
when he says of what he calls "the Baptist church in 
Virginia" that "it took the lead in dissent and was the 
chief object of persecution by the magistrates, and the 
most violent and persevering afterwards in seeking the 
downfall of the establishment;" and again when he 
wails thus: "The warfare begun by the Baptists seven 
and twenty years before was now finished. The Church 
was in ruins and the triumph of her enemies was 
complete. 1 ' For says Dr. Carry: "In this grand struggle, 
while individuals of all parties joined in the opposition, 
the Baptists as a denomination stood alone, except so 
far as they were aided by the few Quakers." 

III. But these movements in Virginia and Massa- 
chusetts were only part of a more general struggle for 
religious liberty for the whole Union. When the first 
Continental Congress assembled the Baptists were there 
and well represented by a strong committee headed by 
such men as Isaac Backus, President Manning, Hezekiah 
Smith and Morgan Edwards, who came with strong 
arguments in support of their demand for justice. This 



146 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

action bore large fruit though not immediately, but 
they were grossly misrepresented for it as disloyal to 
the cause of the colonies against the mother country, 
and as if they had presented claims and threatened to 
prevent the union of the colonies if their claims were 
not allowed. But no people more heartily and loyally 
supported the revolutionary movement than the Bap- 
tists, and from the whole history of the war there is not 
left to us the name of so .much as one Baptist Tory. 
Judge Ourwen, who was a Loyalist and in his " Journal 
and Letters" gives much valuable information concern- 
ing Loyalist exiles, gives the names of nine hundred 
and twenty-six persons of note who sympathized with 
the British and a still larger list of those who as Tories 
were exiled by colonial law, but there is not one known 
Baptist among them. Three hundred were prohibited 
from coming back into Massachusetts. Of the twenty- 
one chaplains in the revolutionary army whose names 
are known six were Baptists, which is much more than 
their proportion. Bhode Island was about two-thirds 
Baptist and Rhode Island furnished a larger number of 
soldiers proportionately than any other colony and a like 
thing was true of Virginia and other and smaller districts 
where Baptists were numerous. The loyalty of Baptists 
to the revolution was so well known to the British that 
they were special objects of vengeance, and a far larger 
proportion of their churches were destroyed in the war 
than of any other denomination. Washington also 
wrote to the General Committee of Virginia Baptists in 
reply to an address upon the new Federal Constitution, 
"While I recollect with satisfaction that the religious 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 147 

society of which you are members have been throughout 
America uniformly and almost unanimously the firm 
friends of civil liberty and the persevering promoters 
of our glorious Revolution. I cannot hesitate to believe 
that they will be the faithful supporters of a free yet 
efficient general government." 

When the Constitution of the United States had been 
adopted by the convention gathered to frame it, it was 
submitted to the various states to be ratified. Immed- 
iately the Baptists gathered to consider whether it 
sufficiently secured their religious liberties, and con- 
cluded that it did not. The only provision it made as 
to religion was that "No religious test shall ever be 
required as a qualification to any office or public trust 
under the United States." Nevertheless they advised 
its adoption, as they were not willing to imperil the 
government by its defeat. The favorable action of nine 
states was necessary for its adoption and its fate seemed 
to hang upon the vote of Virginia. It was the action 
of Rev. John Leland, famous in Baptist annals, which 
turned the scale for its adoption in Virginia.. He was 
nominated as the anti-federalist candidate to the con- 
vention which was to decide the issue for the state, Mr. 
Madison being the opposing federalist candidate. His 
popularity was so great that his election was deemed 
sure notwithstanding the eminence of his opponent. 
According to the custom of those days, the citizens 
assembled to hear the opposing candidates set forth 
their views and argue their case one after the other. 
Mr. Madison spoke first and Mr. Leland listened with 
careful attention, and after his conclusion, ascended the 



148 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

platform and, instead of opposing him, declared him- 
self convinced by the arguments of Mr. Madison that 
they ought to vote for the new constitution, and with- 
drew his candidacy. This action of Mr. Leland secured 
Mr. Madison's return to the convention, when his 
opposition would surely have prevented it. As it was 
Madison's influence in the convention that carried the 
new constitution through it, and as without Virginia 
the nine states necessary for its adoption could not have 
been secured, a Virginia statesman, in his eulogy on 
James Madison, publicly declared that "the credit of 
the adoption of the Constitution of the United States 
belonged to a Baptist clergyman, formerly of Virginia, 
by the name of Leland."* 

But the Virginia Baptists immediately began an 
agitation to make freedom in religious matters more 
secure, and by the advice of Madison they addressed 
Washington upon the subject, and received from him 
strong assurance of his sympathy with them in the 
matter of securing religious freedom. It was through 
their efforts that, a month after this, the famous First 
Amendment to the Constitution was proposed under 
the leadership of Madison and Jefferson, and though 
earnestly opposed in Congress was finally passed and 
ratified by the states; and thus came into the Constitu- 
tion those words so often quoted, "Congress shall make 
no law respecting an establishment of religion or 
prohibiting the free exercise thereof." As Dr. Gambrell 
said at the Young People's Convention in Baltimore, 
"If there had been no Baptists there would have been 

*See Bap. Quar. Review, 1871, p. 250. 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 149 

no First Amendment to the Constitution. 1 ' This did 
not, of course, do away with the existing establishments 
of churches in the various states nor forbid oppressive 
state laws, but it threw the influence of the national 
government against them, and since 1787 no attempt 
has been made towards the establishment of a church 
in any state. 

V. Another influence often mentioned and some- 
times disputed is that which came through a Baptist 
church upon Mr. Jefferson in furnishing him with ideas 
of government which he afterwards embodied in the 
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of 
the United States. At the basis of every great move- 
ment and at the turning point in every crisis stands a 
man, and in the mind of that man there is a thought. 
He may or may not be conscious of the origin of that 
thought. It may have come to him at the suggestion of 
some other, himself obscure, but in his mind it takes root 
and through him becomes the power to move a nation. 
So the world may or may not know the real origin of 
its best things. In this way, through Thomas Jefferson, 
is the Baptist principle in church government said to 
have given shape to this government. And indeed, in 
those familiar words, " We hold these truths to be self 
evident that all men are created equal; that they are 
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; 
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness," we seem to hear the far away voice of the 
early Anabaptists; and in the words "that to secure these 
rights governments are instituted among men deriving 
their just powers from the consent of the governed," to 



150 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

see only the broader gleam of that principle long before 
established by Roger Williams and practically exhibited 
in every Baptist church. There was a Baptist church 
not far from Mr. Jefferson's home in Monticello whose 
meetings for business he sometimes attended, (Curtis 
says, for months in succession), and with whose pastor 
he was well acquainted. It is said that this pastor, Rev. 
Andrew Tribble, once asked him how he liked their 
church government and that he replied that it struck 
him with great force and interested him much; that he 
considered it the only form of true democracy then 
existing in the world, and that he had concluded that 
it would be the best plan of government for the 
American colonies. This was several years before the 
Declaration of Independence. 

I see no reason to doubt the truth of this statement, 
and indeed, if we must doubt it then we are uncertain 
of very much that is taken for history, for it is better 
attested than many things that are received. Mr. 
Tribble made this statement himself to Dr. Fishback 
and by him it was written down. Mr. Curtis in his 
"Progress of Baptist principles" states that "a gentle- 
man of the highest respectability and well known in 
North Carolina' 1 told him personally "that his attention 
had been called to the subject and he, knowing that the 
venerable Mrs. Madison had some recollections on the 
subject, asked her in regard to them. She expressed a 
distinct recollection of Mr. Jefferson speaking on the 
subject, and always declaring that it was a Baptist 
church from which these views were gathered."* It is 

♦Page 357, 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 151 

certainly true that both Jefferson and Madison and 
their families were well acquainted with the struggles 
of the Baptists .and deeply interested in them, and it is 
not possible that they, being the men they were and 
working with them so long for the same ends in Virginia, 
should not have known and thoroughly understood the 
principles which they advocated and upon which their 
churches were conducted. Jefferson's mother was an 
Episcopalian but her sister, his favorite Aunt, was a 
Baptist, as was also a brother of Madison. Jefferson 
also writes "To the members of the Baptist Church of 
Buck Mountain," calling them his friends and neighbors 
and thanking them for congratulations," We have acted 
together from the origin to the end of a memorable 
revolution and we have contributed, each in the line 
allotted to us, our endeavors to render its issues a per- 
manent blessing to oar country." He understood their 
aims and worked with them for their accomplishment. 
Mrs. Madison was a remarkable woman, was intimately 
acquainted with Mr. Jefferson and certainly had ample 
opportunity to know his views and their origin, and her 
testimony should be decisive. To be sure he was not 
ignorant of the history of other republics, and to be 
sure he could not be conscious of the ultimate source 
of all his thoughts; but certainly we ought to receive 
his own statement, repeatedly made, as to the origin of 
his ideas of government and Mrs. Madison testifies that 
he always declared that it was from a Baptist church 
that he derived them. There seems no room to doubt 
therefore, that it was the practical working of Baptist 
principles in a Baptist church that, through Mr. Jeffer- 



152 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

son, largely gave form and spirit to the government of 
this Union, and that it was the working out of Baptist 
principles in a Baptist government, influencing the 
nation in an ever widening circle, that worked mightily 
to the same end. 

And again, the Baptists are the leaders in the struggle 
which is now going on for the extension of this principle 
of religious liberty throughout the world. They were 
the original agitators for the separation of church and 
state in England, and are still leaders although others 
have adopted their principles and are working side by 
side with them; and although bitterly opposed by 
interested Lords and clergy, we can clearly see that 
disestablishment in England is bound to come at no 
distant day. 

Through the struggles of Baptist missionaries the 
entering wedge has been inserted in Sweden and 
Norway and Denmark and is being driven home. The 
struggle begun again in Germany with Dr. Oncken is 
being bravely carried on by our brethren of today. In 
Mexico Baptists and Presbyterians are teaching prin- 
ciples of liberty and the nobility of regenerated man to 
those who have known only the superstition and 
despotism of a vile and tyrannical church. And in our 
own land the more than four millions of Baptists are 
lifting up their voice in the demand that the last vestige 
of the unholy alliance shall be swept away and all forms 
of state aid to any church be forbidden. The contest 
over government appropriations for Indian schools is 
still fresh in our minds, and we remember with pleasure 
that it was General Thomas J. Morgan, a Baptist min- 



INFLUENCE ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 153 

ister and teacher and now Secretary of our Home 
Mission Society, who, when Indian Commissioner of 
the United States, gave the death blow to the system by 
which millions of dollars have been given by the gov- 
ernment for the teaching of Roman Catholicism and 
the making disciples to this and other forms of religion. 
Congregationalists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episco- 
palians, Friends, Mennonites, Unitarians and Lutherans 
were all receiving government aid for their denomina- 
tional schools, while the Roman Catholics were receiving 
far more than all the rest together and the Baptists 
alone consistently supported their own schools, never 
asking or receiving aid from the government. To the 
honor of these other denominations be it said that as 
the agitation of the question brought out the inconsis- 
tency and wrong of their position, one after another 
voluntarily relinquished such aid, first the Methodists, 
then the Presbyterians and Congregationalists, and then 
the rest, until now the Roman Catholics stand alone 
in opposition to all others in the matter. As the years 
go by and the final outcome of the matter is more fully 
seen, the importance of this action will be more apparent 
and the influence of Dr. Morgan in it more fully 
appreciated. 

Thus the struggle goes on, and thus through the 
centuries victory follows victory, and thus it will go on 
until the principle of man's right to his own conscience 
is established, not only in this country but throughout 
the world, and the anomalous spectacle of a church 
claiming to be the church of Christ upheld, patronized 
and forced upon unwilling souls by the power of a 



154 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

worldly government, will be a thing of the past. When 
that time comes and the influence of what has been 
gained has gone round the world; when the work has 
been accomplished and the sum of human liberty is 
complete, then it will be seen that Baptists from the 
beginning have held the right principle, that their 
struggles and their sufferings have been a priceless gift 
to the world, and that they have been the strongest 
single force which has contributed to the grand result. 

Let me now close with an extract from Dr. Bitting: 
"Here and now, except Romanists, all christians and 
the unconnected masses defend the doctrine of religious 
liberty. Just here it is that, on review, Baptists claim 
their noblest moral victory in the contest. Not only in 
codes but in hearts have they lodged those sublime 
principles for which their blood was profusely shed in 
the past; for which they once and long stood up alone, 
and by which any man of any faith may find immunity 
from the fierceness and relentlessness of religious hate, 
persecution and vengeance. Baptists do not cite the 
facts in any mere love of boasting or with any wish to 
wound, but simply to defend their history; to repel the 
mis-statements of malice or ignorance; to remind them- 
selves and their children of the cost of our heritage of 
freedom and to warn them to preserve it from the 
bigotry which would proscribe any man's religious 
privileges." 

" 'With a great sum' did Baptists buy that liberty 
wherein we were 'born free.' Let no Baptist stain or 
disgrace it with either infidelity or intolerance." 



"Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways and 
see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good- 
way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for 
your souls" 

"That which was from the beginning, that which 
we have heard, that which we have seen with our 
eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands han- 
dled, concerning the Word of life .... that which 
we have seen and heard declare we unto you also, 
that ye also may have fellow ship with us: yea and 
our fellowship is uith the Father, and with his Son 
Jesus Christ: and these things we write that our 
joy may be fulfilled." 



BAPTIST INFLUENCE ON THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF 
OTHER RELIGIOUS BODIES. 



Looking back beyond the beginning of the present 
century, or perhaps to the middle of the last century, 
we can see that a very great change has taken place in 
the beliefs and practices of religion. At that time were 
found everywhere state churches; religion enforced by 
law; churches only formal and religion only a matter 
of ceremonies; the mass of the people unreached; spir- 
ituality dead or too feeble to utter any effective protest; 
vital piety preserved only in a few proscribed sects; 
evangelical and missionary enterprise unknown; infant 
baptism almost universal and church membership only 
by infant baptism and subsequent confirmation; the 
great body of the church membership unconverted and 
a considerable part of it actually licentious, drunken and 
vile and sometimes even atheistic; the ministry no better 
than the people; sacred things commonly ministered 
by men destitute of spiritual knowledge and often 
immoral and profligate; sermons and religious teaching 
only dogmatic or philosophic essays, giving stones 



158 THE BAPTIST IN HISTOKY. 

instead of bread and serpents instead of fish; the minis- 
try not a ministry but a priesthood, for which education 
without spiritual qualifications was considered sufficient 
preparation. But now we find everywhere in what we 
call the evangelical denominations a genuine, spiritual 
Christianity, and much of it even in those churches 
which have been state churches; conversion is a requi- 
site to church membership generally, even though 
conversion be loosely defined; missionary enterprise is 
everywhere exhibited; the Bible is honored more than 
at any other period of history; churches are active in 
every social and moral reform; irreligious life in church 
members is a matter of popular remark and general 
condemnation; revivals are frequent and sought for; 
ministers for the most part are spiritual men and an 
unconverted ministry is condemned; immorality in the 
ministry is sufficient ground for deposition from office; 
and the preaching of the pulpit is for the most part 
gospel and efficient. Truly the change has been great. 
Again as we look at the state churches, the Lutheran, 
the Episcopal, the Presbyterian and the Boman Cath- 
olic, we see a great change even in them and especially 
in this country. The Presbyterian church has dropped 
its character as a state church altogether and become 
openly evangelical. The Episcopal has taken on a 
character of religious zeal and activity altogether foreign 
to it in earlier days. The dead formalism of England 
has been improved in America into something very like 
to spiritual life. The Lutheran church is quite changed 
as to its influence and teaching and from some at least 
of its pulpits the saving truths of the gospel are declared 



INFLUENCE ON RELIGIOUS LIFE. 159 

with clearness and power. In many Lutheran churches 
prayer meetings are held and Sunday Schools conducted, 
which is a thing unknown in the old country; Sunday 
Schools there being only to prepare for confirmation. 
Their churches are for the most part thronged and their 
ministers of a character to command respect. In 
contrast to this, note the statements of a recent lecturer, 
for more than four years a student in German univer- 
sities, concerning the churches in Germany. The 
Protestant churches, he says, are mammoth organiza- 
tions having a membership ranging all the way up to 
seventy-five thousand in a church, but the great 
majority pay little or no attention to church services. 
Seven years ago there were six hundred and sixty-six 
thousand members of state Protestant churches in 
Berlin and only fifty thousand seats in all the Protes- 
tant churches of the city. At morning preaching 
services on Sunday in a church having forty thousand 
members, he counted only eighteen present, and at 
another with twelve thousand members, a hundred 
and fifty present. There are in all Germany with 
fifty-three millions of population, only thirty thousand, 
two hundred and fifty preachers, Protestant and Cath- 
olic, while in America among the four millions of our 
faith and practice alone there are about thirty-three 
thousand ordained preachers. 

The changes in the Roman Catholic Church are not 
as marked, for it is the boast of Rome that she never 
changes. Yet evangelical influences have greatly 
modified even Rome, and there is noticeable a better 
intelligence and a naore independent spirit among the 



160 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

people and a less arrogant attitude of the priests to- 
wards the people, especially in this country. The occa- 
sional uprisings of a parish against the church 
authorities which are reported in the newspapers when 
some unwelcome priest is forced upon them or some 
favorite, but too liberal, priest is taken from them, are 
very significant of a growing spirit of freedom and a 
restlessness under domination, -even among the Roman 
Catholics. 

In another respect also tKere has been a great change. 
At the middle of the last century not only was there an 
established church upheld by persecuting laws in all 
the countries of Europe, but also in every one of the 
American colonies except Rhode Island and Pennsyl- 
vania. The Papacy ruled in France and other parts of 
Europe and Protestants were few and feeble. Luther- 
anism ruled in Germany and had driven the Baptists 
out. Episcopacy collected its money tax in England 
and its tobacco tax in Virginia, and while Presbyteri- 
anism was established by law in Scotland, Congrega- 
tionalism sustained itself by taxes and fines in New 
England. While here and there individuals were for 
freedom in religion, not a single religious body save 
the Baptists and Quakers had lifted up their voice for 
it, but all in turn had claimed, and as far as possible 
had exercised, the right to define and promote religion 
by law and to pursue and punish those who disputed 
their definition. Now it is different. In no part of 
these United States is there a church upheld by law to 
the exclusion of others, nor is there to be found more 
than two bodies (Catholics and Mormons) who would 



INFLUENCE ON RELIGIOUS LIFE. 161 

either favor or permit it. Court after court has decided 
that it knows nothing of any church save as a body of 
people claiming protection in their natural rights, and 
that before its bar every church has the same privileges 
and may claim the same protection. In France, Catholic 
France, Protestant missions are conducted openly and 
with safety. In Italy Baptist and Methodist preachers 
lift up their voices within sound of the Vatican and the 
Pope growls harmlessly. In most of Germany and in 
Denmark, Norway and Sweden, Baptists may live and 
work without molestation save as it may arise from the 
jealousy of the priests and the prejudices of the people. 
In Scotland the Free Kirk stands side by side with the 
Established Kirk, equal to it in numbers and influence, 
and disputes its authority. In Ireland the Establish- 
ment has disappeared. In England full half the people 
are dissenters, and the Establishment is upheld only 
by the selfish interest of the House of Lords and the 
power of a conservatism which bows low before prece- 
dent and venerates antiquity; and in Wales the main 
hindrance to its overthrow is the certainty on the part 
of its supporters that if it were lost in Wales it could 
not be saved in England. Truly these changes have 
been great. 

What has produced them? Several things. Un- 
scriptural religion and unchristian Christianity has 
demonstrated its own impotence even as did ancient 
heathenism. The natural humanity of man has revolted 
from the scenes of cruelty and suffering it has witnessed 
and has lost faith in a principle which could produce 
such scenes, and so there has been a revulsion in favor 



162 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

of liberty. Better bible facilities have made the people 
better acquainted with the word of God wherein they 
read of the loving spirit of Jesus, of the liberty where- 
with he makes men free, and of a church of spiritual 
membership, baptized upon profession of personal faith 
and regeneration. The personal work of the Spirit of 
God has brought great revivals among men, leading 
them to a truer knowledge of real religion and a better 
spirit in religious things, a more spiritual life and a 
closer obedience to Christ's will. But while the law of 
the race under a gospel dispensation is progress and 
many things work together for the same end, it is 
always true that there are leaders in this progress, some 
whose privilege it is to be specially marked as instru- 
ments of good in producing such great changes. And 
as to these changes, we can but notice that they have 
been just along the line of Baptist teaching and are, in 
fact, but a fuller acceptance of those truths which have 
been our principles from the beginning; "and therein 
do we rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." We remember 
that in the beginning Baptists were the only agitators 
of these questions and that they have been the most 
persistent agitators of them all the way through. We 
remember the great amount of their writings and dis- 
putations upon these subjects, their confessions pub- 
lished to the world or given before magistrates and 
tribunals, their testimonies given under torture and 
their sublime deaths, which have called attention to 
their principles. We remember the very large infusion 
of Baptist blood into other churches, at least in this 
country; the thousands upon thousands converted 



INFLUENCE ON RELIGIOUS LIFE. 163 

under Baptist influences and for various reasons uniting 
with other churches, and the multitude of Baptist 
daughters who have married Pedobaptist sons and 
gone with them into Pedobaptist churches, and the 
other thousands who have accepted Baptist principles 
and yet remain in other churches, all these to be a 
leaven and an influence of no small importance. We 
remember all these things, I say, and think it not too 
much to claim that these changes have been very large- 
ly due to Baptist influence. They have been made in 
response to a call back to the true spirituality and sim- 
plicity of the New Testament, and in just so much as 
they have been a return to a true gospel may every one 
of us be grateful and glad. 

But before discussing these more modern influences 
let us go back for a little while to the times of the 
Reformation. The name of Martin Luther has been 
vastly praised and lauded, and multitudes bowing down 
before his utterances have worshiped him as other 
multitudes have worshiped John Calvin and John 
Wesley, and the impression often made upon the young 
student is that the great Reformation was almost 
entirely his work, just as it is often called Luther's 
Reformation. But nothing could be more of a mistake 
than that. One man cannot make a reformation, and 
had he not had many predecessors and many helpers, 
Luther himself would never have been heard of. We 
hear most of the great commanders, but a commander 
alone can not carry on a campaign or win a battle. 
Back of him there is a great army of common men, 
and to win his fame many a heroic deed is done by the 



164 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

soldier in the ranks whose name, even, the world never 
knows. So, had there not been a long period of prepa-^ 
ration and a large background of gospel teaching and 
believing among the people, and many lesser movements 
preceeding, the great Reformation had never been. A 
reformation in religion, like a reformation in govern- 
ment, implies a wide spread movement among the 
people. This preparation was plainly the work of the 
older and evangelical forces of an Anabaptist character, 
known at various times under different names as Wal- 
densians, Arnoldists, Hussites, Anabaptists, etc., terms 
which are not exclusive of each other, as these various 
bodies run into each other in a way which makes clear 
distinction between them often impossible. Of the 
forces of the Reformation itself the truest and the 
purest was the great Anabaptist movement, which 
sought not to re-form but to re-create, bringing the 
people back to the true gospel and the right way of 
salvation through faith in Christ and cutting loose 
from unspiritual princes and worldly powers as well as 
from the slavery of dead forms; and bitter indeed was 
the disappointment of these gospel workers when they 
found that some of the worst features of the old corrupt 
establishment were to be preserved; that the new 
churches, instead of being spiritual bodies, were to be 
composed of a motley mixture of materials and to be 
controlled, directed and supported by the secular 
power. 

What Europe would have been today if the despised 
Anabaptists had been allowed their liberty is not 
difficult to imagine. The continent would have been 



INFLUENCE ON RELIGIOUS LIFE. 165 

filled with evangelical churches, living pure lives and 
preaching a pure gospel. The Reformation would have 
gone as far beyond Lulheranism as Lutheranism did 
beyond the Papacy. The Papacy itself would have 
been honeycombed with gospel truth and well nigh de- 
stroyed. The enterprise of modern missions would have 
been begun two hundred years sooner than it was, and 
the world today would have been fully evangelized. 
Popular liberty would have taken the place of imperi- 
alism, and old world monarchy would have been a thing 
of the past, even though the form of it were still main- 
tained. State churches would have been long ago 
abandoned with their oppressive priesthood, and a long 
and awful story of religious bigotry and hate would 
have remained untold. And, what to the christian is a 
thought of infinite sadness, untold millions who have 
lived and died would have learned the way of life and 
chosen it, instead of being left in delusion to follow a 
path of darkness and go out into deeper darkness at 
the end. When we consider a hundred years of our own 
history and see what a free church in a free state has 
done, this picture does not seem overdrawn. 

What the condition of the reformed church is today 
has been already told. State churches with their 
unconverted ministers, christian members few and far 
between just in proportion as they have not been 
influenced by dissenting bodies; that is the picture. 
All the rationalism and infidelity of the day is the 
product of these false churches, and all the wild schemes 
of men to break down the authority of God and uproot 
his Word among men have been hatched by their 



166 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

accredited Professors of Theology and Doctors of 
Divinity. Dr. Samuel Haskell says that some years 
ago he heard it publicly stated by a Presbyterian 
clergyman who had studied abroad in his young man- 
hood, that when Robert Haldane, the Scotch Baptist, 
entered Geneva in the year 1816 tltere was not known 
to he a converted person in that historic center of 
Reformation Christianity, and the surprise awakened by 
the statement was only increased by the investigation 
which verified it. He says, "Under this spiritual death 
the creed of Calvinism was but a skeleton, nor even 
that without the loss of its principal parts. Pastors 
and theological teachers, students and people at large 
had gone over to formalism and rationalism. Arian, 
Unitarian and rationalistic essays had usurped the 
place of preaching and teaching the Lord Jesus. Bible 
instruction was unknown. Worldly life and dissipating 
pleasures overran the sabbath and vitiated common 
morality. It had even come to pass that the fundamen- 
tal doctrines in our religion were prohibited themes of 
discussion. Candidates for the ministry were required 
to sign a pledge not to agitate such subjects as the 
innate sinfulness of man, the God-head of Jesus, the 
Trinity, spiritual regeneration and the election of 
grace;"* and as Haldane began to discuss these prohib- 
ited themes, efforts were made to banish him from the 
city. And this in Geneva, the city of John Calvin, 
where his main work was done and where he supposed 
the best triumphs of his life were wrought! Such was 
the outcome of the work of one of the greatest of the 

♦Heroes and Hierarchs, p. 240. 



INFLUENCE ON KELlGlOUS LIFE. 167 

Reformers and of the church formed under his own 
hand! It only shows again how a wrong principle 
adopted in the beginning will in the end bring to 
naught the work of the greatest men, and that a church 
made up of unregenerate people, brought in through 
infant baptism is not the church against which the 
gates of hell shall not prevail. 

The Reformation was a mighty movement; towards 
a purer doctrine, for the most of Lutheran theology is 
good; towards learning, to which a great impulse was 
given; towards liberty, for the power that was enslaving 
men was broken, and although not destroyed, it never 
regained its hold and never will. And yet the Refor- 
mation viewed as a spiritual force, a spiritual movement 
resulting in a true church and leading men to Christ, 
was a failure, (how much a failure those can best under- 
stand who have lived and tried to do christian work 
fully under the blighting and deadening influence of 
the Lutheran church); and the Reformation churches 
have found their true prosperity and success only in 
proportion as they have abandoned Reformation prin- 
ciples of church life and come over upon Anabaptist 
ground; and in proportion as they have adopted the 
principles of those whom, in that time, they persecuted. 
Upon the very ground and among the same peoples 
where the Reformers taught, the work of the Reform- 
ation has now to be done over again, and a large part 
of the Reformation church is as truly missionary ground 
as is the Papacy or heathenism. Reformation princi- 
ples have proved themselves defective and Anabaptist 
principles have proved themselves true. I would like 



168 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

to suggest as the subject of a most interesting and 
instructive treatise which some well qualified person 
ought to write, "The failure of the Beformation." 

But what became of that which we have described as 
the best element of the Beformation, — those thousands 
upon thousands of Anabaptists? Have they left any- 
permanent influence upon Europe, and if not, why not? 
It is a fair question but the answer is not far away; 
indeed we have already had the answer. Their princi- 
ples were scorned, their writings were destroyed, their 
teachings proscribed, and they themselves perished 
amid the fires of persecution. Only a remnant escaped, 
foot sore, weary, poverty stricken and haunted, to meet 
anew those same fires in England and America until 
they were finally quenched by the spirit of freedom. 
Europe has waited to feel again in this century the reflex 
influence of that which there began, and her princes 
and priests again are trembling before those principles, 
now grown strong, which she then sought to destroy; 
and the twenty-eight thousand German and the forty- 
six thousand Scandinavian Baptists are seeking to do 
for Europe under better conditions, what they were not 
allowed to do in the days of the Beformation. The day 
will yet come when the Anabaptist influence in Europe 
will be powerfully revived to the blessing of the whole 
continent. 

Beturning now to more modern movements, the 
chief progress in religion has been mainly in two 
directions, namely, towards a spiritual cliurcli member- 
ship, and towards a fuller recognition of the supreme 
and sole authority of the Bible. These are specifically 



INFLUENCE ON KELIGIOUS LIFE. 169 

Baptist doctrines, for they were not in the constitution 
and have not, until late years, been in the practice of 
other churches. To be sure, every church claims bible 
authority for its principles, but why then, such princi- 
ples as are not to be found in the gospel and are con- 
trary to it? And why. the presence, and as far as they 
are concerned the omnipresence, of a little book which 
supersedes and contradicts the Bible in giving rules 
for the church? And to be sure, every church claims 
a christian membership, and in these days the member- 
ship of evangelical churches is mainly made up of 
converted persons, but that is a departure from the 
original idea, and some of them are very loose in their 
definition of conversion and make very small demands 
upon candidates for membership. The fundamental 
idea of a Baptist church is convei^sion, by which we 
mean regeneration; the idea of the other churches is a 
profession, a training in religiousness, and a standing 
in church connection. This fundamental idea of con- 
aversion is not in the Presbyterian standards, though it 
is largely in their practice, but the church is made to 
consist of believers and their children, a phrase which 
occurs over and over in Presbyterian writings, and the 
unbelieving children are held to be proper subjects of 
a church ordinance and, after certain teaching, of 
membership in the church. Their theory of a church 
is that of a training school wherein unbelievers are 
educated into holiness, rather than a company of those 
who have been regenerated into holiness. It is not in 
the Methodist Discipline, which provides that any per- 
son having the desire for a godly life may become a 



170 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

member of the Class on probation, and at the end of six 
months, if he still have the same desire and is striving 
for righteousness and has lived a correct life, he may 
be received into full connection; and yet he may know 
full well and his minister may know that he has never 
experienced a change of heart and is not a child of 
God. It requires only a desire and a struggle, not a 
regeneration. It is not in tha early Congregational 
theory or practice, for they admitted to membership 
the unconverted who had been sprinkled in infancy, at 
first not to the "communion," but afterwards, fully. 
Backus says that they never demanded conversion, 
even in their ministers, until after the Great Awaken- 
ing in 1741. When Princeton Theological Seminary 
was being founded by the Presbyterians in 1812 it was 
a matter of formal and sober discussion whether it was 
necessary that a minister be a converted man, and con- 
sidered that it was not* The doctrine of the Baptists 
was that a minister must be himself taught by the 
Spirit and so qualified by his own inward experience; 
that he must even be conscious of a. personal and special 
call of God to that work, and they emphasized these 
qualifications in contrast to those who required only a 
full course of scholastic training. And yet now all 
these churches are seeking conversions and rejoicing 
in revivals which once were considered improper and 
unauthorized and inadmissable. A hundred years ago 
the Baptists were the only body who held conversion 
to be an indispensible requisite to church membership, 
but this has now come to be generally recognized. 

♦Curtis 1 Rise and Prog., Etc., p. 66. 



INFLUENCE ON RELIGIOUS LIFE. 171 

The other line of progress is not less marked, namely, 
a growing acknowledgement of the supreme authority 
of the Bible; and this is really what has produced the 
improvement of which we have just spoken. This, you 
will remember, is what we gave as our fundamental 
principle; the absolute authority of Christ in his 
church, and therefore the absolute authority of the 
New Testament which is His will revealed. It has been 
the custom of others to run back to creeds and councils 
and church fathers for their authority, but the hold of 
the too much revered fathers on the conscience of the 
church is being broken, and the bible is coming to take 
a much larger place. The devil has noted this change 
with his accustomed shrewdness, and has therefore 
mustered all his available forces of scholarship on the 
one hand and liberalism on the other, in a desperate 
attempt to discredit the bible and break its hold on 
men, or at least, to weaken it as much as possible. But 
the effort already begins to fail. 

This increased influence is due partly to the constant 
appeal of Baptists to the inspired authority as against 
the uninspired, and partly to the wide spread distribu- 
tion of the Bible itself; for the common people read it, 
and their common sense tells them that if it is the word 
of God they ought to follow it instead of the word of 
man. As long as there are bibles there will be Baptists, 
and the more those bibles are studied the more will 
their tribe increase; for no matter what men may teach 
as ancient or venerable, or as to what is convenient or 
inconvenient, or as to what "makes no difference 11 and 
what does, there will always be some honest and hard 



172 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

headed individuals to stand up and say, "But the bible 
does not teach it that way," and to insist that the bible 
way should be followed. 

This drift bible-ward is shown in several ways. For 
example, it used to be sufficient to quote the fathers 
and the doctors, and the opinion of a learned man was 
counted as sufficient defense of any given practice; but 
now men have begun to feel that their positions must 
be sustained by arguments from the Bible. This has 
given rise to all sorts of absurd and ridiculous things, to 
be sure, since men have invented all sorts of institutions 
and practices of their own without any command of 
God, and now are trying to defend thern by appealing 
to his commands, and defend human institutions as if 
they were set up by divine authority. So we are asked 
to accept the infallibility of the Pope on the ground of 
the primacy of Peter whose successor he claims to be, 
when Peter was never a leader of the Apostles in any 
other sense than as the one of a company who is the 
quickest to think and act naturally comes into promi- 
nence and leadership, when his leadership was soon 
superseded by Paul's, who "rebuked him to his face," 
and in comparison with whose permanent influence 
upon the church of Christ Peter's is very small indeed. 
Besides there is no evidence that Peter was ever in 
Eome until the very last of his life if even then, and 
never as its bishop, while we know that Paul was. 
The Papacy committed a great blunder in not claiming 
descent and heritage of office from Paul instead of 
Peter. Again, Peter's supposed successors have insisted 
on the celibacy of the clergy, while he is the only one 



INFLUENCE ON RELIGIOUS LIFE. 173 

of the Apostles of whom we positively know that he 
was a married man; for we read that Peter's mother-in- 
law was sick. 

In like manner infant baptism is defended by the 
claim that it takes the place of circumcision, a claim 
that involves contradictions and absurdities, and of 
which not the least mention is made in the New Testa- 
ment, although there were many occasions which 
certainly required its mention if it had been true. 
Circumcision was fundamental in their faith, as infant 
baptism has been in that of Pedobaptist churches, and 
Paul was constantly assailed for his insistence that it 
was no longer necessary. You remember how vehe- 
mently he declares to the Galatians "Behold I Paul say 
unto you, that, if ye receive circumcision, Christ will 
profit you nothing." And again he alludes to his con- 
tinual persecution as proof positive that he was not (as 
some seem to have represented him as doing) preaching 
circumcision. How easily he could have let himself 
out of the continual trouble with the Judaizers by 
simply saying "Why yes, brethren, I still uphold our 
ancient rite of circumcision, only now, you know, it has 
been changed and we baptize the children instead of 
circumcising thein." It is not conceivable that he 
would not have said some such thing if it had been 
true, for the occasion demanded it. It is also defended 
by the assertion that in the New Testament household 
baptisms there must of necessity have been infants 
included; an assertion which rests purely upon the 
imagination. A good reply was made by a Baptist 
brother once when a Methodist brother insisted that 



174 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

there must have been infants in the household of Lydia, 
and that therefore they were baptized. "Why no, my 
dear sir," said he, "you are mistaken. Lydia was a 
widow, and the only children she ever had were two 
daughters, one of whom was at this time seventeen 
years old and the other twenty." "Indeed!" replied the 
Methodist, "and where did you get such astonishing 
information as that?" "Why," s&id the Baptist, "I got 
my information just where you got yours; I guessed at 
it, and my guess is just as good as your guess." 

The drift is seen again in the disposition to revise or 
discard or disregard the old creeds and doctrinal state- 
ments of the churches, and to set aside the decisions of 
councils which for ages have been venerated as much 
as the Bible itself. We remember, for instance, the 
late discussion concerning the revision of the West- 
minster Catechism, in which such revision was openly 
called for by many prominent ministers and upon the 
ground that its statements are not according to bible 
teaching and are not believed by the Presbyterians of 
today. 

It was a growing sense of the importance of the Bible 
and of having its every word an exact and true repre- 
sentation of the original that led to the Revised Ver- 
sion of of 1881, to produce which the best scholarship 
of England and America gave its best etfort; though 
even here an ancient conservatism and church influence 
was too much felt, and it stops short of the whole 
truth. The wonderful impulse given to bible study in 
these late years, showing itself in bible conferences, 
classes for study and published helps innumerable, 



INFLUENCE ON RELIGIOUS LIFE. 175 

needs no remark, and in this the Revision was largely 
instrumental. But to the Revision itself a great im- 
pulse was given by Baptist influence, for they were 
the beginners in the work, agitating the subject through 
millions of pamphlets, tracts and other documents, and 
a copy of our own Bible Union version of 1865 was in 
the hands of each one of the revisers — a version which 
for faithfulness and clearness has never been surpassed. 
Baptists have always been foremost in bible translations 
and revisions. The great British and Foreign Bible So- 
ciety owes its origin to the interest aroused by the 
translation and publication of the scriptures in India by 
Dr. Carey, one of our ministers, and to the energetic 
efforts of Rev. Joseph Hughes, another of our ministers. 
Though thus founded by a Baptist, his brethren were 
afterwards driven out of it for their insistence upon a 
faithful version for the heathen, as they were soon after 
from the American Bible Society for the same reason.* 
The first notable translations into heathen tongues 
were made by William Carey, and with the help of 
Marshman and Ward the Bible was translated into 
thirty-one different languages in ten years." The first 
complete Chinese bible was translated by Dr. Marsh- 
man, and the Chinese New Testament now in universal 
use by Dr. Josiah Goddard, the Assamese and the 
Japanese bibles by Nathan Brown, the Burmese by 
Judson, the Siamese by John Taylor Jones, the Shan 
by Dr. J. N. Cushing, the Karen by Drs. Mason and 
Cushing, the Telugu by Dr. Jewett, all Baptists; and 
besides these there have been many others. The first 

♦This action is fully discussed in "Bible Societies and the Baptists" 
by Dr. C. C. Bitting-, a little book which every Baptist oughtlJto read. It 
is issued by the Publication Society, 



176 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

translation into the language of the American Indians 
was made by Roger Williams twenty years before 
Elliott's famous Indian bible. And the only revision 
of the English bible ever undertaken by a single 
denomination was the Bible Union version already 
referred to. 

Again, this drift is seen in the increasing number of 
immersions in other denominations and in the increas- 
ing number coming from other denominations to us on 
account of dissatisfaction with their baptism. I know 
of a large Methodist church not far away of which 
three fourths the members were immersed after con- 
version. I have seen a Methodist church in which a 
baptistery was built and nearly all of whose members 
are immersed, and have been told of two others. It is 
worthy of remark that nearly all the famous evangelists 
of the day have felt themselves obliged to receive 
immersion in order to be themselves obedient to the 
gospel they teach, although they think it expedient not 
to say much about it, and still hold their membership 
in Pedobaptist churches. The baptism of such noted 
men as Dr. A. T. Pierson of Philadelphia, and Dr. John 
Robertson of Glasgow, from whose sermon on believer's 
baptism and baby sprinkling I have already quoted, is 
noteworthy also, both being Presbyterians, and likewise 
the remark of Dr. Philip Schaff, probably the most 
noted Presbyterian scholar in the country, made before 
the Saratoga Bible Convention, that he believed in 
immersion and that, were it not for lifelong Presbyter- 
ian associations, he should be himself immersed and 
join with the Baptists. 



INFLUENCE ON KELIGIOUS LIFE. 177 

But an especially interesting evidence of a return to 
New Testament principles is found in the decline of 
infant baptism. For myself, I am glad it has gone 
into a decline; may its sickness be without suffering; 
may its decline be rapid; may its demise be speedy and 
without regret, and may the world never look upon its 
like again. This change of feeling in regard to infant 
baptism means not only a difference but a revolution in 
church life, which is slowly working itself out; for this 
practice is not incidental in the churches which use it, 
but fundamental. It stands for a whole system of doc- 
trines, and when it goes they go with it. It means 
baptismal salvation; it means the efficacy of sacraments; 
it means the authority of tradition as opposed to the 
authority of the Bible; it means a preaching of rites 
and ceremonies and forms instead of repentance and 
faith, and there are many other things that belong with 
it. Its discarding means the coming over of the 
churches upon the ground of personal faith and a 
regenerated life and personal obedience to our Master 
and Lord. It is beyond question that this practice does 
not have the hold upon the churches which it once had. 
Some Pedobaptist pastors are candid enough to admit 
that it is entirely without scriptural foundation, as does 
Dr. Lyman Abbott, in an editorial in the "Outlook! 1 of 
November 27th, 1897. In discussing the recent Baptist 
Congress he says, "They" (the Baptists) "all hold, and 
hold as strongly as ever, the doctrine that Apostolic 
baptism was a symbolic expression of repentance and 
faith, and that to baptize infants who can neither repent 
nor exercise faith is a change of the original ceremony 



178 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

from its original purpose. Historical scholarship abun- 
dantly confirms this contention. Infant baptism was 
unknown in the Apostolic church. It was introduced 
into the church at a post-Apostolic date. It has com- 
pletely changed the significance of the rite. The change 
can be justified only on the ground that no rite is of 
the essence of Christianity, and that the same spirit of 
christian liberty which allowed -the christian church to 
dispense with circumcision allows it to change baptism 
from a symbolic act of faith by a penitent to a symbolic 
act of consecration by a parent." We may perhaps, be 
allowed our own opinion about the "christian" quality 
of such "liberty," and be allowed also to remark that, 
as circumcision never had any place in the christian 
church it never was "dispensed with." So it is now 
defended upon different grounds, and many Pedobaptist 
ministers do not care to defend it at all. Indeed the 
most of them do not care to talk about it and in a long 
conversation with a Methodist minister some time ago 
on this and kindred topics, all he would say was, "We 
don't make as much of that as w r e used to." It is not 
spoken of now as a necessary ordinance but as a matter 
of preference; not as a baptism at all, indeed, but only 
as a consecration or dedication of the child, or a pre- 
sentation before the Lord. These things are significant 
but the figures on the subject are more significant, for 
they show that actually less infants in proportion year 
by year are thus "baptized" or "dedicated" or "conse- 
crated" or "presented." There are several lines of 
evidence of this fact; first, the admissions of those who 
practice infant baptism, then the increase in the number 



INFLUENCE ON RELIGIOUS LIFE. 179 

of adult baptisms and their proportion to infant bap- 
tisms, then the actually decreasing proportion of infant 
baptisms to membership. 

The writings of Pedobaptists themselves show that 
in their opinion the practice is falling behind. Thus 
as to England, a writer in the London Spectator, F. 
Simcox Lea, stated, July 10th, 1880, as a well known 
fact that a comparison of the birth registers of London 
with the parish registers showed that less than half the 
children were "baptized." In a report of one of the 
Classes, or Presbyteries, of the Dutch Reformed Church 
held in 1879, we find that "In view of the great neglect 
of infant baptism the Classis at its Spring session 
requested Rev. F. H. Van Derveer D. D., to prepare a 
paper on this subject. An exceedingly able and instruc- 
tive paper was presented by Dr. Van Derveer and a copy 
of the same was requested for publication/' Note the 
phrase "in view of the great neglect of infant baptism.'' 
The "Christian at Work," some years ago, gave some 
figures on infant baptism and then said, "But one con- 
clusion is deducible from these statistics; the adherence 
to infant baptism is not only practiced by less than one 
half the Presbyterian church membership but there is 
a decided falling off in the practice;" i. e. among those 
who still do practice it. A Chicago correspondent of 
"The Presbyterian" notes that "In our German churches 
during the last year, the baptisms of infants were one to 
every seven and one-half members, while in our Amer- 
ican churches for the same time they were only one to 
thirty members/' Records of Methodist Conferences 
contain references to the same sort of falling off, such 



180 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

as this from the North Carolina Conference of 1880; 
"During the progress of the twentieth question the 
matter of infant baptism came up, owing to the small 
number reported baptized in some of the districts. Rev. 
A. W. Mangum spoke in reference to the injury done 
to the cause of infant baptism by a prominent Metho- 
dist publication." After some further remarks, the 
Bishop enjoined strict attention-to the matter and they 
went on with their business. The Boston Congrega- 
tionalist says under date of January 18th, 1882, "The 
simple fact appears to be that the doctrine of the 
evangelical churches as to infant baptism is in a trans- 
ition state, and has at present a materially loosened 
hold upon the popular conviction . . . Congregation- 
alists — under the attrition of Baptist friction on the one 
side, and the force of their own principles of individu- 
alism on the other — have become a good deal demoral- 
ized in this particular." " 'The attrition of Baptist 
friction' is good, very good."* 

I have taken great pains to gather full and official 
figures of the five leading Pedobaptist denominations in 
America, giving the membership and the number of in- 
fant and of adult baptisms for each and every year as 
far back as the records have been preserved, and have 
carefully figured out also the ratio of baptisms — both 
infant and adult — to membership each year. The 
records of the (Dutch) Reformed church go back to the 
year 1825, of the Presbyterian to 1827, of the Methodist 
to 1857, of the Congregationalist to 1859, and of the 
Episcopal to 1868, with partial reports back to 1850. 

♦The above references are taken from Prof. H. C. Vedder's pamphlet 
on "The Decline of Infant Baptism, " published in 1890. 



INFLUENCE ON HELlGIOUS LIFE. 181 

These figures I have either copied myself from the 
official published reports or obtained from the publica- 
tion headquarters through the favor of those in the 
employ of the various Boards.* A study of them is 
very interesting for many reasons. Having them all 
before us we can readily settle the question of the 
decline of infant baptism and its present status. There 
are variations — and sometimes quite notable varia- 
tions — in the figures from year to year of course, but 
taking a long series of years together the steady increase 
in some columns and the steady decrease in others is 
very striking. 

Taking first the adult baptisms; if we find them in- 
creasing year by year, the inference would naturally 
be that infant baptisms are decreasing, else these 
adults or many of them, would have been already bap- 
tized in infancy. If we find them proportionately 
increasing, the inference is plain; and if we find them 
proportionately increasing while the infant baptisms 
are proportionately decreasing, the conclusion is beyond 
question. In all the denominations we find, as we should 
expect as the denomination grows larger, an increase in 
the actual number of adults baptized. In three of these 
denominations there has been a decided increase in the 
proportion of adults baptized to membership, in another 
a slight increase, while in the other one there has been 
a decrease in the proportion both of adult and infant 
baptisms, which would seem to show that this denomi- 
nation is not holding its own in the matter of growth. 
Taking an average of the first ten years of the record 

*See full table of figures at the end. 



it 


" 26.8 


U 


a 


u 


" 19.4 


il 


" 128.6 


a 


a 


a 


" 35. 


a 


" 78.2 ' 


a 


a 


a 


" 77.2 



182 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

in each case and comparing it with the average of the 
last ten years, we have the following proportions of 
adult baptisms to members: 

INCREASE. 

Presbyterians, from one in 50.2 members to one in 41.1 
Methodists, " 

Congregationalists, 
Reformed, " 

DECREASE. 

Episcopalians, from one in 32.3 members to one in 51.2 

Looking at it another way, we find that the Presby- 
terians, during the first twenty years, when their 
membership ran from a hundred and thirty-five thou- 
sand to two hundred and twenty thousand, baptized 
about seven thousand, three hundred and fifty less 
adults than infants each year on an average, but during 
the last twenty years, when their membership has been 
more than four times as large, and the difference there- 
fore should be four times as great, they have averaged 
only about five thousand and nine hundred less each 
year. The Congregationalists in the first ten years 
from 1859 baptized four thousand, six hundred and 
fifty-five more adults than infants, but in the last ten 
years, while the membership is two and a half times as 
large, the excess of adult over infant baptisms is about 
seven times as large. Among the Methodists the 
ratio of infant baptisms is very regular, but in the 
column of adult baptisms there is great variation. In 
only four years have the infant outnumbered the adult 
baptisms, namely, in 1857, 1861, 1865 and 1881, while 



INFLUENCE ON RELIGIOUS LIFE. 183 

in other years the adult baptisms have outnumbered 
the infant from a few hundred in 1880 and 1882 to one 
hundred and twelve thousand and five hundred in 1892; 
and in the ten years ending with 1897 they baptized 
three hundred and fifty-three thousand and eight hun- 
dred more adults than infants. In the Episcopal church 
the ratio of adult to infant baptisms remains about the 
same. In the Reformed church, while the proportion 
of adult baptisms to membership has increased very 
slightly, the proportion of infant^ baptisms has fallen 
decidedly, so that whereas they did in the first ten years 
baptize five and a half times as many infants as adults, 
in the last ten years they have baptized only four and 
three-tenths times as many. We find, therefore, that 
the adult baptisms have increased both actually and 
proportionately in all the denominations but one. 

Coming now to the infant baptisms we find that in 
each case there has been a decrease in the proportion 
of baptisms to membership, and in all except the Metho- 
dist figures the decrease is a decided one. There is an 
increase, of course in the number of infants baptized, 
but their number has not grown nearly as fast as the 
number of members. We notice too, that this decrease 
has been very regular, showing that an educational 
process is going on and that a change of sentiment is 
being produced in regard to the matter. We notice too, 
that while there are great variations in the adult bap- 
tisms, showing years of revival and years of coldness, 
these years have affected the infant baptisms but 
slightly. The columns of ratios show very plainly that 
the feeling of obligation in regard to infant baptism is 



184 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

gradually dying out and a belief in believers' baptism 
taking its place. 

Taking up the denominations separately, we find the 
Presbyterians baptizing one infant to each thirteen 
and two-tenths members in 1827, and that they have 
never reached as high an average since. * In 1837 the 
ratio is one in eighteen and eight-tenths; in 1847 one in 
nineteen; in 1857 the same as twenty years earlier, but 
from that point on there is a marked decrease, so that 
1867 gives us one in twenty-three and nine-tenths, 1877 
one in twenty-nine and eight-tenths, and in 1899 it 
reaches its lowest point, one in thirty-nine and three- 
tenths, just about one-third as many infants in propor- 
tion to members as in 1827. 

But taking up one of their official records — and the 
one at hand happens to be for the year 1897 — and ex- 
amining the list of churches in detail, some very 
interesting things come to light. Thus it appears that 
the larger churches are very generally allowing the 
practice to fall into disuse, (and these, of course, are 
supposably led by their ablest pastors), and that the 
average is kept up by the smaller churches. Many 
churches of from one hundred to five hundred members 
report only a few, less than half a dozen, and in a 
majority of the churches of four hundred members 
and upwards, (a class of churches in which fifteen years 
ago, the average was from one in fifty to one in eighty), 
the average is only from one in seventy to one in a 
hundred, and a number of very large churches report 
none at all. For example, the Westminster church of 
Minneapolis, with sixteen hundred members, reports no 



INFLUENCE ON KELIGIOUS LIFE. 185 

infant baptisms; the Cincinnati Second, with four 
hundred and eighty-four members, the Albany Second, 
with three hundred and thirty, the LaPorte, with three 
hundred and forty-four, and the Logansport, with five 
hundred and thirty-five, all report none. The Oakland 
First, California, with thirteen hundred and twelve 
members reports five; the Chicago First, with seven 
hundred and nine members, reports one; Newark, New T 
Jersey, Third, with five hundred and seventy members, 
reports three; Albany Fourth, with eight hundred 
members, reports four; Ithaca, New York, with six 
hundred and sixty-five members, reports two; Fifth 
Avenue, New York City, Dr. John Hall pastor, with 
two thousand six hundred and fifty members, reports 
seven; (in 1880 they reported seventeen hundred and 
thirty members and twenty-one infant baptisms). The 
Madison Square, New York City, reports eight hundred 
and one members and three infant baptisms, and the 
Westminster, four hundred members and one infant 
baptism. The Pennsylvania churches of all kinds seem 
to average higher in infant baptisms than those of any 
other state, yet Germantown First, with nineteen hun- 
dred and ninety-one members reports no infant bap- 
tisms. But to show what a church can do when it really 
sets out to do something, we have the Madison Street 
Church of Baltimore, which with two hundred and 
twelve members baptized two hundred and fifteen 
babies! This beats the record of any church that has 
yet been discovered. But they must have gathered up 
nearly all the babies in Baltimore, for the La Fayette 
Square church with three hundred and seventy-four 



186 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

members could only find two to baptize and the West- 
minster, with three hundred and forty-three members 
did not find any. 

The Congregationalists show some surprising things 
in their statistics. Their ratio nowhere runs as high 
as either of the other denominations, yet they are the 
only ones that anywhere show any actual gain in the 
proportion of infants to membership. Beginning with 
one in forty-nine and four-tenths in 1859, they reach 
the lowest point in 1881 at one in eighty-nine and a 
half, and since then have come back to the same figure 
in 1897 as at the beginning. Yet over against this fact 
is to be set the fact that their Triennial Council, held 
in Portland in 1893, revised and recommended to the 
individual churches for adoption a confession of faith 
in which all reference to infant baptism was intention- 
ally left out. Inasmuch as the Western churches show 
a higher average than the Eastern, and the smaller 
ones than the larger ones, I attribute their increase in 
infant baptisms to their growth in the newer communi- 
ties of the West, where the effort to gather in and the 
contact with families of every faith would naturally 
lead to the baptism of everybody's babies. If a Con- 
gregational pastor can get a foothold in the family of 
one brought up in Lutheran or Methodist faith, and to 
some degree attach them to his church by baptizing 
their baby, he will naturally do it, especially in a 
small community where several struggling churches 
are striving for members. They are the only body that 
are not now baptizing less infants than ever before, 
and their last ten years compared with the first ten 



i 



INFLUENCE ON RELIGIOUS LIFE. 187 

shows an increase from one in fifty-nine to one in fifty- 
one and a half. 

Bat here are some interesting things and some sur- 
prising variations: The Congregational Year Book for 
1897 shows that the Western states averaged from one 
infant baptism in forty-two members to one in fifty- 
three; but Massachusetts, the home of Congregational- 
ism, shows only one in sixty-nine; New Hampshire, one 
in a hundred and sixteen; and Maine one in a hundred 
and fifty-one, and in 1898, one in a hundred and eighty- 
two! Wisconsin, with almost twenty-two thousand 
members reports five hundred and eighty-three, and 
Vermont, with not two hundred less members, only two 
hundred and seventy-three. Ohio with more than three 
times the membership of Pennsylvania, reports only 
thirty-three more infant baptisms, and in 1898 reports 
six less. Minnesota, with a little more than eighteen 
thousand members reports four hundred and one, and 
New Hampshire, with a little more than twenty thous- 
and reports a hundred and seventy one. The whole 
number of churches reporting in 1896 was five thousand 
five hundred and forty-six, and of these two thousand, 
six hundred and twenty-five or nearly half, reported no 
infant baptisms, though many of, these were small 
churches. Churches of from four hundred to a thousand 
members are not very plenty in any denomination, yet 
in the Year Book for 1898 we notice twenty-four such 
churches that report no infant baptisms and fifteen more 
that report not more than three, besides many others 
that only report half a dozen or less. The other denom- 
inations show the same sort of variations. 



188 THE BAPTIST IN HISTOKY. 

These curious variations can mean but one thing, 
namely, that the doctrine of infant baptism is not held 
by many churches with any strictness and that churches 
in the same denomination vary much in the regard they 
have for it. It should be remembered too, that any- 
thing below the very highest averages shows a falling 
off in the practice; for the highest averages are the nor- 
mal ones if the doctrine is strictly held, because of course 
no one baptizes more babies than they have, and when 
the average falls, it must be that not all have been bap- 
tized. The census reports show about one birth in 
twenty of the population each year, but we find the 
Presbyterians baptizing one to every twelve or thirteen 
of the membership, the Episcopalians one to five or six, 
and the Reformed even as many, in 1823, as one to 
three. Difference in conditions is also to be taken into 
account, and the fact that in the older states there has 
been much emigration and in the cities families are not 
as large, but that does not by any means explain it all. 
The only conclusion is that the doctrine is loosening its 
hold upon the churches. 

The Methodists nowhere show as high an average as 
do the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians or the Re- 
formed, nor is theje a marked difference shown from 
year to year; yet, taking the first ten years and compar- 
ing them with the last ten, we find a decrease from one 
in twenty-four and six-tenths to one in twenty-six and 
seven-tenths, and in the last two years for which I have 
full figures the ratio is one in twenty-nine and six-tenths 
and one in thirty. Their highest ratio is one in twenty 
and one-half and their lowest one in thirty. 



INFLUENCE ON RELIGIOUS LIFE. 189 

The Episcopal records previous to 1868 are only 
partial but serve well enough for purposes of compar- 
ison, as it is assumed that fuller records would not 
materially change the ratio of baptisms to membership. 
Their reports are given only once in three years and 
the membership given is that for the year of the report, 
while the baptisms given are the total for three years. 
The ratio therefore, is obtained by taking the average 
of baptisms and dividing the membership by it. This 
does not give a perfectly accurate result for any one 
year but does give accurate results for purposes of com- 
parison during a series of years. The twenty-eight 
dioceses reporting in 1850 show a membership of a few 
less than eighty thousand, and one infant baptized to 
every six and three-tenths members. In 1859 it increases 
to one in five and six-tenths, and from that point stead- 
ily and evenly decreases to one in thirteen in 1898, 
when their last report was given. We should expect 
that here, if anywhere, the proportion would be main- 
tained, but they are baptizing only about half as many 
as they did. 

The Eeformed church has preserved its records 
farther back than any of the others and I have complete 
figures back to 1815 except two years. But beginning 
in 1825, we find them baptizing one infant to every six 
members. In fourteen years they have fallen off one- 
half. In 1845 the ratio is one to fourteen and nine- 
tenths; in 1865 it is one to seventeen and six-tenths; in 
1881 it drops off to one in twenty-one and three-tenths, 
which is exceptional, and comes up in 1899 to one in 
eighteen and six-tenths. 



190 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

Gathering up these figures now, we have the highest 
and the lowest proportions as follows: 
Presbyterians, highest, one in 13.2, lowest, one in 39.3 
Methodists, " " 20.5, " " 30. 

Congregationalists, " 47. , " " 89.5 

Episcopalians, " " 5.6, " " 13. 

Reformed, " " 6. , " " 21.3 

Comparing the first year of the record used with the 
last, (and looking over the whole table of figures, this 
seems to give a very fair representation), we have the 
following: 

Presbyterians, in 1827, one in 13.2, in 1899, one in 39.3 
Methodists, " 1857, " 25.4,' " 1897, " 30. 
CongregatTts, " 1859, " 49.4, " 1898, " 54.6 
Episcopalians, " 1850, " 6.3, " 1898, " 13. 
Reformed, " 1825, " 6. , " 1899, " 18.6 

And finally, averaging now this last table, we find that 
the decrease in the five denominations taken together 
and during the various periods given is from one in 
twenty to one in thirty-one and one-tenth; a falling off 
of a little more than one-third. 

What has made this falling off in the matter of 
infant baptism? When we consider that Baptists are 
the only ones who do not, and have not always, taught 
that it is a beautiful and holy thing, a duty and an 
obligation; that by it great blessings are brought to the 
dear children and safeguards thrown around their lives; 
but that they have always denied it and fought it, have 
shown its absurdity in reason and its utter lack of 
foundation in scripture, while they have taught the 
true significance of believers' baptism; and when we 



INFLUENCE ON EELIGIOUS LIFE. 191 

consider the great increase in numbers and influence 
of these same Baptists, there seems but one answer; 
they did it. 

Thus the Baptists have been a restraining influence 
to keep other denominations from suffering to the full 
the evil results of their own principles, and a leavening 
influence to permeate them with better principles. 
Were it not for the Baptists and the printed Bible, 
which is continually making Baptists, what is to hinder 
other denominations from speedily falling back to the 
low level of two hundred years ago? Their principles 
and doctrinal standards are the same now as then. 
They have preserved within themselves the seeds out of 
which the state church and dead formalism grew, and 
what would hinder the same sort of seed from produc- 
ing a second time the same sort of a crop? Nay, they 
have within them the very roots out of which grew the 
Papacy itself with its awful history; namely sacerdo- 
talism, which shows itself in ministerial rule and 
government by the Synod and Conference, and sacra- 
mentarianism, which shows itself in infant baptism and 
false views of the Lord's Supper. But for the Baptists, 
would not infant baptism soon be universally practiced 
as it was in the middle ages? For do not the creeds of 
these other churches call for its observance, and do not 
their pastors teach it as a sacred thing? And would 
not the infants, when grown, come into the churches as 
they used to do, by virtue of their baptism and not by 
virtue of their being born again? Would not these un- 
converted infants become teachers and preachers, 
filling the churches with worlcUiness and false doctrine 



192 THE BAPTIST IN HISTORY. 

and sin? And would not these false churches thus 
produced become again oppressors and persecutors of 
God's true children, filling the land with the groans of 
of the saints and pursuing true godliness even unto 
death? I verily believe that the Baptist force is that 
which upholds and preserves Christendom, and that if 
they were suddenly annihilated — a consummation which 
is devoutly to be wished by some narrow minded souls 
— it would be the greatest calamity that could happen 
in the religious world as it was in Europe in the 
sixteenth century. 

We have seen now, what Baptists have held as 
guiding principles, what they have suffered for those 
principles and what those principles have done for the 
world; how they have been vital to purity of religion 
and freedom in government, and how they have brought 
a spiritual Christianity and the broadest liberty where 
they have come. Surely our holding faithfully to these 
principles, and in their fulness, is not merely a question 
of courtesy to other denominations or a matter.of mere 
indifference, but a matter of vital necessity to the purity 
of Christendom and the coming of the kingdom of God 
in this world. In view of our history we can lift up 
our heads in the face of anyone and say in the language 
of Luther, "Here I stand. God help me! I can no 
other," and feel that we are in the company of those 
of whom in all the ages we have no need to be ashamed. 
Here in this land of ours, whose freedom we did so much 
to secure, we may feel that we have a heritage and a 
right, for with a great price bought we this freedom. 



INFLUENCE ON RELIGIOUS LIFE. 193 

We need not labor for the triumph of our name but for 
the triumph of the truth, and we may hope for the 
time when the name will be no longer distinctive. A 
solemn obligation is upon us forever to insist upon the 
divine origin of our principles and their entire correct- 
ness; to declare them fully and fearlessly in the spirit 
of love and of a sound mind; to practice them faithfully 
and honestly until they shall prevail, for prevail they 
surely will; until everywhere only the regenerate shall 
be admitted to Christ's church; until complete and 
willing obedience to Him and Him alone shall be the 
recognized test of discipleship; until everywhere God's 
Word is supreme and the fundamental article of our 
Baptist faith shall be the foundation of the creed of 
every christian, and CHRIST SHALL BE ABSO- 
LUTELY SUPREME IN HIS OWN CHURCH. 










.0 © 









* ' 






<V 









y- ' 






x 0o „. 



A* 



V 









^ 















*V *, 



$■ 



^\ y 









r^ ^ 









-** 






" 



vv "V 




















































^ 






- 















£ 















'> 



•%. 







































APPENDIX.-Table of Membership and Baptisms. 





PRESBYTERIAN. 


METHODIST (North). 


CONGREGATIONAL. 


EPISCOPAL. 


REFORMED. 




m 
> 

so 


s 

■5' 3- 


p a. 


p 


•si 


so 


3 


CO > 


SO 


£| 


50 


s 
-■ 1 


CO > 


_! 


p 3. 


50 


s 

II 


II 


B-S 


■s 1 


■x 


s 
i: i 


II 


_. | 


|| 


„g 


m 
> 






» 


• § 




: O 




3 


I 9 


1 


:' O 




» 


: O 


» 


: 


: 7 


& 


; 


3 


■ ° 


i 7 


i 


: 


" 


: 9 




1825 










































10,076 
11,260 
10,039 
13,683 
11,703 
14,122 
14,316 
20,214 
22,469 
21,984 
21,054 
22,604 
19.441 
21,923 
22,212 
23,783 
23.962 
23,758 
211,322 
31,214 
32,883 
32,200 
32.840 
34,100 
33.980 
33,553 
34,586 
35,616 
36,597 
37,020 
38.927 
40,413 


105 
136 

97 
125 
110 
190 
310 
589 
478 
265 
187 
135 
109 
277 
319 
197 
277 
253 
682 
523 
217 
150 
169 
169 
219 
259 
238 
224 
350 
262 
290 
369 


05.0 
82.8 
103.4 
109.4 
106.3 
74.3 

34.3 
47 

112.. 
167.4 
178.3 

79 

69.6 
120.7 

86.5 

93.1 

43 

59. ( 

214! 7 

194.3 

201.7 

155 

120.5 

145 

104.5 
141.3 
134.2 

109..- 


1.626 

1.607 

2.2ll 
1.379 
1.760 
1.764 

2(101 

L944 

1 .585 
1.860 
2.025 
1 .853 
1,860 
1.983 
1 ,858 
2.211 
2.185 
2.195 
2.152 
2.074 
2.015 
2.395 
1.995 
2.075 
2.570 
2 59 1 

2' 188 
2,754 


7 

8 

6 

8.4 

8 

8 

10 
10 

8 

10,8 
11.9 
10.4 
10.8 
12 
12.7 
12 
12.2 
15.2 
11.2 
14.9 
15 
15.S 
16.9 
14.2 
16.8 
16.6 
15 
15.2 
15.9 

11,6 




1826 


135,285 
14(1.308 
162,816 

182.017 

217,318 
233,580 
247,964 


2,01,5 
3.380 
3,082 
3,255 
4,390 
0.050 
0.050 
5,738 


43 
41 

22.5 
33.6 
43.2 


10.220 

10700 

12,171 

12,202 
12,108 
13.286 
14,035 
13,004 


13^2 
13.6 
13.3 
































15-0 


1HW 














1828 


































1829 


































1830 


































1831 


15 

16.3 
16.6 
19 


































1832 


































1833 


































1834 


































18H5 


































183fi 


219,126 

220.557 

177,605*- 

128.043 

120,583 

134,433 

140,433 

159,137 

100,487 

171,879 

174,714 

1711.453 

1 '.12.022 

200.830 

207,254 

210.300 

210,414 

210,203 

225,401 

231.40-1 


2,729 
3,031 

2,002 
1,044 
1,741 

1 ,8 12 
2,748 
4,303 
3.287 
1,020 
2,050 
1,704 

' -II. 
2,772 
2,918 
2,5 10 
2.042 
3.507 
3,433 
3,189 


89 

72.7 

66 

77.9 

73 

72.9 

36.4 

50.6 

85.8 
100 
82 
82.2 
74.8 
72 
82 
74.5 
62.6 
67.4 
70 


11,089 

IO.10I 
7,714 
7,844 

8,305 

10,025 

9^608 
9,677 
9,342 

0,837 
0,805 
10,372 
10.001 
11,000 

11,1,44 

12,041 
11,734 
11,021 


19.7 

18.8 

17.3 

16.5 

16 

16 

14.9 
15 

17.9 

18 

19 

19.5 

20.3 

20 

19 

19 

18.8 

18 

10 . 7 
IS 6 
































1856 


1837 


































1838 


































1839 


































1840 
































1810 


1841 
































1841 


184'? 
































1842 


IS 13 
































1843 


1844 
































1814 


1845 
































1815 


1S4f> 
































1846 


1847 
































1847 


1S4S 
































1848 


Is 19 
































1849 


18.-.0 






















79,987 * 


210 


34.5 


12,679 


6.3 


1850 


1851 






















IS5I 


1852 
































IS52 


is;,:: 
































IS55 


is:, j 
































1851 


IS",", 












1855 














1856 


1859 279,630 


3.370 
5,170 

0,072 


72.2 
50 


13,007 
13,084 
16,104 


18.8 
18.5 
17.2 


709,968 


27,583, 


25.7 


27.957 


2., 1 






















44,443 
46,197 

50.304 


407 

847 
978 


109 

54.4 
51.4 


5.162 
3,172 
3,814 


14 

13.3 
13 


1557 
185S 
1859 


832,657 


40,101 


10.0 


,-,!, 


21.8 


250,152 


10.52; 


"23" 


5.001 


49 4 


139,611} 


4,907 


28.4 


24,851 


5.6 


i860 


._)!).> ,|J, 


5.150 


56.8 


15.031 


8 7 


855,726 


39.464 


21.6 


32.902 


26 


253,765 


35( 


















50.295 


463 


108. ( 


3,506 


14.3 


1860 


1861 




3,070 


81.7 


15,130 


12.3 


865,446 


32.347 


36 


34.411 


25 


255,034 


2,151 


118 


4.54- 


56 












50.427 


470 


107.2 


1.050 


12.4 


1861 


lso-l 


303.280 


2.282 




























124,370" 


3,694 


33, ( 


20.141 


6.1 


51.528 


387 


133 


5.0S0 


16.6 


IS62 


lsr,:i 


2''7 575 


2,105 


105 


.0,104 


12 3 


822,845 


24.138 


34 


52.24 1 


2.) 2 


260,284 


3,321 


78 


4.123 


63 












53.007 


399 


132.5 


3.155 


16.7 


1865 


1SI',4 


231.01 ;o 


2.380 


97.4 


0.801 


'1 


829,379 


21.809 


33.4 


32.190 


25.6 


202.649 


4.02° 


















53.833 


585 


91 A 


3.215 


17 


1864 


I SI if, 


232,450 


2.821 


S2.4 


0,002 


13 


822,711 


20.150 


28 


:5i soi 


25 


263,296 


4,97, 


53 


4,133 


63 5 


148,068§ 


4,384 


33 r 


22,31b 


6.6 


54 286 


540 


100.6 


3.004 


17.6 


IS05 


i860 


230,300 


5.003 


47.8 


i 0.000, 


'5 


871,113 


47,419 


18.3 


55.551 


24.4 


267.453 


5,22] 


















55.917 


605 


92.4 


3.507 


16.9 


1866 


iso7 


246,350 


5.200 


46.7 


10,209 


13 


971,866 


50,083 


16.4 


42.65,- 


22 5, 


278,708 


8,720 


32 


5,012 


55 












57,846 


937 


61.7 


3.229 17.9 


186, 


ISliS 


252,555 5,191 


48.6 


1 1 ,212 


22.5 


1,060,265 


67.065 


15.8 


10.207 


22.9 


291.012 


7.861 








195,183 


6,419 


34 


20,85: 


7.2 


49,508 


919 


53.8i 5,155 1 14.4 


1,808 


I 809 


258,003 ' 4,236 


60.8 


1 1 33,3 


>,:>, 8 


1,114,712 


61,147 


18,2 


17.501 


23.4 


300,362 


7,094 


42.3 


5,022 


59.8 












58,796 


797 


7.) , 3,585 | 10.4 




1S70 


446,561 10.122 


44 


10.170 


28 


1,173,000 


00.481 


17 6 


5(1 155 


25,2 


306.515 


6,335 


















61,144 


974 


02.7 


5,121 


17.8 


1870 


LR71 


455,378 


S.585 


53.6 


17.420 


26 


1,231,008 


65,770 


18 7 


54 517 


22.5 


312,054 


5,797 


53.8 


. 265 


59.4 


235,006 


7,297 


32.; 


■-0 ,s: 


7.6 






69 . 7 


3.877 


10,1 


1871 


1872 


408,164 


S.S25 


53 


16,781 


m 


1,272,496 


61,311 


•'() 7 


53,45; 


23.8 


318,916 


6,57: 




















1.106 


.,.8 


1.190 




1872 


1873 


472,023 


8.450 


55.8 


16 088 


25 2 


1,288,704 


50.103 


■12 


53.287 


24 


323,679 


5.871 


55 


4.57C 


70.8 














745 


90 








1874 


405,03 t 


11.082 


42.5 


18,838 


20 3 


1,345,089 


71.015 


18 7 


58.011 


22.5 


330,391 


6.89S 








282,359 


7,373 


38.2 


31,721 






951 


75 . 8 








1875 
1876 


500.034 
535,210 


1(1. 10 
15,753 


47.5 
33.9 


17,004 
18.087 


28 ' ' 


1,384,152 

1.-124,994 


66.718 

80.234 


20.7 
17 7 


52.218 
56 308 


26... 
25.2 


338,313 
350,658 


8,745 
10,466 


38.6 


5,184 


65 


































74.600 


1 ,95 1 


38 | 4.230 


17.4 


1876 
1877 
1878 
1879 
1880 
1881 

1882 
1885 


1877 


557.071 


15. ->63 


36.5 


18,(102 


30 8 


1,471,777 


76.248 


19 3 


55.851 


26.3 


505,505 


12.318 


29.6 


5 -1 


68.2 


297,387 


8,434 


35.2 




8.7 








IS 


IK7N 


567,855 


11.010 


48.9 


19,220 


29 5 


1,505,577 


7O.S90 


21 2 


50.725 


26.0 


375,654 


10.686 


















80,228 
80.208 
80,591 




75.3 .,.si4 


J),, 




574,480 10,018 


57.3 


18,501 


31 


1,523,306 




24 


50.557 


26.9 


352.510 


8.37C 


45.7 


5.371 


71 










.... 


1.-.S 1 


62.4 1.148 


11,, 


1880 


578,071 I 0.232 


02.0 


18,960 


30 


1,564,105 


59.330 




58.555 


26 51 


384,332 


5,893 








344,034 


7,732 


44.4 




9.5 


(38 


j°; ; ' 1 *sg 


'i'-' 


1881 


581,401 , 8,174 7] 


17.480 


33.2 


1,553,540 


50,972 


30 1 


55.957 


25.7 


555. 655 


5,560 


69.3 


4,309 


89.5 










.... 


BRQ 




107 


1882 

1SS3 


000,005 10397 


61 
57.7 


19,026 

17,728 


31 


1,572,177 
1,601,072 


57.241 
01.802 


27.1 
25 8 


50.8115 
55,876 


27.0 


387,610 
590.209 


5.99! 

6.374 


62 


5,366 


73.8 


364,367 


'6,997 


"02" 


36.25-1 


i(J 80.156 


940 St. Si 5.989 


20 


ISSI 


015,042 11,942 


51.5 


10,483 


31.6 


1,047,719 


09,1-15 


22, 8 


02.025 


26.6 


401,549 


8,290 
















! s-''"o-> ' 1 0(9 ' "OS J ""I 


19,5 ' IS85 
17.0 | I8S0 


1885 
1886 


044,025 16,191 
001,800 18,471 


42.3 
35.8 


21.012 
21.010 


30 

30.6 


1.000,010 

1,765,228 


78.417 

98,814 


21.5 

17 8 


04.01. 
07.075 


26.3 
26 


418,564 
436,379 


13,075 




9,882 

10.357 

12.560 

11.655 
12.664 
11,494 


57 

51 : 2 
52 

47 

52.8 
49.4 
54.6 


423,280 


8,608 


49.1 


41,534 


10.1 85.057 1.001 75. s 1.70S 


1SS7 


007,835 20,114 


34.6 


25.100 


295/ 


1.800,501 


101.520 


18 4 


74,638 


25 


457,584 


12,039 
ISjSO 






















lsss 
1889 


753,740 'lo',547 


38.6 


23,869 

21,501', 


30.3 
30.6 


1. 931, 002 
1.998,293 


91.500 

loi.m;-, 


21 

10 7 


72.305 
74,01" 


26.9 


491.085 


33 

41.4 

48 

56 


486,866 


10.512 


46.1 


46.073 


10.5 


5,8,812 


1.268 


70.5 


5.258 


16.0 

17 


IS81I 


is; it) 


775 0O3 


17,471 


44.4 


25.487 


30.8 


2,064,437 


80.15-' 


25 6 


77.5 I'. 


21 , . 4 


,00 .5 














91.32:! 
95.965 


1.6111 




5,666 






1891 


800,700 


21.570 


37 


20,121 


30 


2.157.915 


112.6112 


18 7 


81.441 






14,040 

15.247 
17.70.1 
15,943 
14,881 
13.055 
11,202 




11.351 


49.5 


49.137 


11.4 


1.211 


79 


5.776 


16.fi 


1.892 


IHHi> 


830,170 


2(1.830 








2,201. OS 1 


197,505 


11 


84.739 20.^ 














97.520 


1.191 


81.6 


5.597 


17 1 


1,895 


isn: 


855,080 


21.758 


39.3 


26,247 


52.0 


2,260,196 


113.028 


19.8 


87,806 25.8 


555 550 

615.195 
625.-04 
625,254 












10l|8|| 


1.501 


07 


6. 178 


16 


1894 


1S'.)4 
L89E 

IS'. II 

1891 

is; is 


895,997 
022,004 
013,710 
000.1111 
075,877 


2S.2I2 
25.720 
24,1.81 
21 .500 
21.571 


31.8 

36 
38 

44 
15.2 


28,051 

2V 15; 


33.3 


'2,366,374 
2,454.645 
2.522.112 
2,558.210 
2,608,694* 


ll .;~'-"2 

1 I9052 
100 205 


16.3 93.107, 20. J 
17.6! OS. 121, -■< 
21.2 88.45S l.1.0 

21 4 84 I' 1 !C ; 


618,500 
678.999 


11,844 

ii.867 


52 
"hl.2, 


50.968 
:1 ;■•? 


12 
ill" 


103.54s 

101.701 
107.900 
110.713 
111.665 


1.580 

1,181 

1.315 
1.117 

1 III 


71.1 

7(50 
82 

97.0 


5.917 
6.155 

155 

5.987 


17.1 

17 

17 

; 

18 6 


1895 
1896 
1897 

1898 

IS99 


189! 




17.0S2 


55.5 


24,008 395 


2,616,238*: si) -vi 
















*From IS17 b> IS7U tin- tiuuus ^iven are tor the 


"These nWeToTeT 




tSdiScSJepSrt'ii'f ISdiocls'Srlp"",'!.'.'^ ,, 


■-( lid School" onlv. 1 his table includes only the 








lf ,hc presb >' terlans - 


the comparisons made 










page IS. home fract.o,,. .re dropped. 1| 



